Tea for Texas

Can Texans be won over to the antique tradition of tea and little sandwiches in the afternoon? Dallas’ and Houston’s new gilded hotels are counting on it.

by Alison Cook

I Am the Greatest Cook in the World

And I’m telling you, if you can’t batter it, fry it, spike it with chiles, or bathe it in buttermilk, it’s not worth your time.

by Gary Cartwright

Charlie Brooks’ Last Words

Charlie Brooks was the first man to die by lethal injection, but everyone wondered whether he or his partner was the real murderer. In his last days, Brooks answered that, and other questions.

by Dick J. Reavis

The Year Everything Changed

If you think Texas is pretty much the same as it was ten years go, you’re wrong. Nineteen seventy-three remade the state overnight.

by Paul Burka

Main Street

It’s Houston’s driveway, a twenty-mile kaleidoscope of bankers, punkers, strippers, surgeons, students, grackles and cars.

by Stephen Harrigan

Other Main Streets

They’re where you went to get your hair cut or to see a picture show or to watch the squirrels on the courthouse lawn.

Texas Primer: Lyndon’s Lincoln

Can you picture LBJ in a Datsun?

Anne Dingus

Behind the Lines

What’s next?

by Gregory Curtis

Business

The Cassandra of Crude

Dale Steffes can predict the future of the oil business. So why do the majors turn a deaf ear? Because, says Steffes, the news is all bad.

by Harry Hurt III

Books

As Good as Her Word

Texas women write about crop dusters and frozen custard and the Dallas-Forth Worth International Airport in the encouraging new anthology Her Work. Life Sentences, though, is a flimsy feminist exercise.

by Jan Reid

Popular Music

Thunder Claps

The Fabulous Thunderbirds storm away on a new album that shows why they’re Texas’ hardiest rhythm and blues band. Eight more releases capture everything from mandolin picking to Balinese monkey chants.

by Pepi Plowman

Classical Music

Standing Room Opera

Texas opera lovers would have ended the season happily just having seen a lively Rosenkavalier, a magical Rheingold, and a fiery Wozzeck. But then the Houston Grand Opera’s Pagliacci came along and took their breath away.

by W. L. Taitte

Movies

Next to Godliness

Gandhi presents its title character as all but a god and India as all but a paradise. Starstruck is a lark; Sophie’s Choice is a letdown.

by James Wolcott

Reporter

Texas Monthly Reporter

The unhealthy politics of emergency medicine; according an accordionist his due; sucking it up for Lite beer; the condo boom that went bust.

by Peter Applebome

Roar of the Crowd

End of the line for a cop, a coach, quilters, and the Confederate Air Force.

State Secrets

Treasure hunters want state booty; Republicans aren’t so hot about Phil Gramm; there’s hope for Texans with money in Mexico; Texas newspapers worry about USA Today.

Edited by Paul Burka

Touts

Sing along, turn around, dip in.

by Patricia Sharpe

Puzzle

Paper tigers.