The Plane the Pentagon Couldn’t Stop

West of Forth Worth, General Dynamics builds the F-16, a good little fighter plane that could have been great if the Air Force brass had kept their hands off it.

by Michael Ennis

The Coyote Wars

The stake is survival - for either the sheep and goat ranchers of West Texas or the smartest predator of all.

by Jan Reid

And Jesus Said, “Mai Eeñeno”

From its headquarters in the wilds of Dallas to remote jungle outposts all over the world, Wycliffe Bible Translators is defying bitter opposition and dedicating itself to speeding up the Second Coming.

by John Bloom

The Reckoning

A young man reconstructs the details of a murder that happened nearly a hundred years ago. Why? The murderer was his great grandfather.

by Lucius Lomax

The Year of The Flower

What’s behind this year’s rampant display of wildflowers? The birds and the bees, of course.

by Suzanne Winckler

Get Out and See The World, Kid...Or Bring The World Back Home

These gifts should activate the wanderlust in any recent graduate.

by Cyndy Severson

Crime

Lock ‘Em Up

Mandatory sentencing means every felon gets the same sentence for the same crime - and for the rest of us it means a lot of crimes that won’t happen.

by Jim Atkinson

Behind the Lines

Gaudy, drawling, filthy rich.

by Gregory Curtis

Church

The Eve of Destruction

The millennium is nigh, according to some evangelists, and when Jesus returns, Texans will experience either rapture or hell and high water.

by William Martin

Lifestyle

Downhill All The Way

Our Colorado skiing vacation thrilled the men in my life, but all it gave me was bruised feet and a battered ego.

by Prudence Mackintosh

Books

A Crush on Love

In Painted Dresses Shelby Hearon tries to plumb the depths of love, but her characters turn out to be too shallow.

by Dominique Browning

Media

Shades of Gray

Thomas Thompson won his Blood and Money libel suit, but the trial left one question unanswered: how much of his imagination is a nonfiction writer allowed to use?

by Lawrence Wright

Classical Music

Mozart Is As Mozart Was

Conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are two centuries apart, but their ideas about music are exactly the same.

by W. L. Taitte

Film

Blood Buff

The Fan is the story of a man whose adoration for an actress turns to hate, and the movie turns your stomach. Alan Alda takes a studiously liberated look at divorce among old married couples in The Four Seasons. Take This Job and Shove It is another workingman’s-hero movie; so far it’s the best of the bunch.

by C.W. Smith

Reporter

Kirk Crocker’s radiation nightmare; Texas International tries to swallow Continental Air Lines - and chokes; Panhandle farmers confront the M-X missile folly; can Houston have its park and oil wells, too?

Roar of the Crowd

Fire and brimstone on the right, Observer on the left, guns under the bed.

Touts

About-face, inner space, and keeping pace.

by Patricia Sharpe

Puzzle

Hard hats.

State Secrets

Farmers and oilmen fight over water; a Houston gold rush for TV licenses; houses multiply faster than people; security for brokers.

Edited by Paul Burka