His Perfect World
Growing up in Longview and Texas City, John Lee Hancock dreamed of a life in the movies. Today, he’s one of L.A.’s hottest screenwriters.
Writer-at-large Stephen Harrigan is a longtime contributor to Texas Monthly whose work has also appeared in the Atlantic, National Geographic, the New York Times Book Review, and other national publications. He was a finalist for the 2015 National Magazine Awards in the commentary category for his writing at Texas Monthly. The following year, he won the Texas Institute of Letters’ Edwin “Bud” Shrake Award for his Texas Monthly story “Off Course.” He has also received the TIL’s Lon Tinkle Award for lifetime achievement, the Texas Medal of Arts Award, and the Texas Book Festival’s Texas Writer Award, and he is a member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame.
Harrigan is the author of twelve books of fiction and nonfiction, including the award-winning novels The Gates of the Alamo and Remember Ben Clayton; Big Wonderful Thing, a history of Texas; and The Eye of the Mammoth, a career-spanning collection of his essays, many of which were written for Texas Monthly. Harrigan’s latest book is the novel The Leopard Is Loose. He is also a screenwriter who has written many movies for television. He lives in Austin.
Growing up in Longview and Texas City, John Lee Hancock dreamed of a life in the movies. Today, he’s one of L.A.’s hottest screenwriters.
For breathtaking snorkeling in subterranean rivers and caverns, take the road out of Cancún and head for the Yucatán rain forest.
Finally, a toymaker that isn’t just kidding around: A new Alamo playset gets things right.
In 1731 the Spanish presidio of Los Adaes became the first capital of Texas. Today no one recognizes the name.
Carnality, Castration Anxiety, and Jouissance in Willie Nelson’s Taco Bell Commercial.
Eating a hunk of beef at Brenner’s is not as politically correct as it used to be. But that doesn’t stop me.
From the YMCA pool to the ocean blue, I’ve always been at peace in the deep.
Action abounds in the new slide show at the San Jacinto Monument, but the view of history falls a bit short.
Retracing the trail that tamed the Texas wilderness—the Camino Real.
Robert A. Caro has spent fifteen years writing his monumental biography of Lyndon Johnson. He is halfway through.
Snapping turtles are cantankerous, grotesque, and savage. And those are just a few of the reasons I like them.
Once the private preserve of an oil executive, the 300,000-acre Big Bend Ranch, with all its desert grandeur, has now entered the public domain.
To the people of Austin, the poisoning of an ancient tree was more than a crime; it was a blasphemy.
In downtown Mexico City are the ruins of the great Aztec pyramid, the site where one empire ended and a new world began.
They were the classic Texas Indians—fierce, majestic, and free. Today’s Comanches find their lives defined by legends and bitter truths.
The allure of Galveston Bay is not natural beauty but the determination of nature to survive ugliness.
As much as I hated playing football, I hate watching it more.
A tiger, a zoo, a terrifying death.
In which the author becomes a star—for three seconds.
We were in love in a way I didn’t quite trust. There was nothing grand or electric about it, just a steady, deepening insistence.
By turning two tiny dots into two huge hippos, James Marshall made an indelible mark on children’s literature, and little people laughed happily ever after.
The blackland prairie of the old South meets the wide-open spaces of the wild West at Texas’ great geologic divide.
For team ropers on the All-Girl circuit, the true reward is the happiness of pursuit.
Henry Cisneros has the vision and charisma of a born leader. Does it matter that he has the soul of an Aggie?
In Texas, survivors of this life-and-death operation wear their scars like medals of honor.
He was the definitive Davy Crockett, and with good reason.
A museum in Texas is the last place Jacques-Louis David would expect to find his late masterpiece, but we’re glad it’s here.
The Chihuahuan Desert is a place of extremes, where the visitor not only observes but participates in the struggle for life and death.
Somervell County suffers an identity crisis; an Alamo freak takes twenty years to build a diorama; Merlin Tuttle is batty.
Unlike the Alamo, which can seem as remote and mysterious as Stonehenge, the San Jacinto battlefield has few secrets. Its history lies close at hand.
It had to happen. Novelist James Michener has finally trained his macroscope on Texas, and the result is, well, long.
An early castaway described Padre Island as “a wretched, barren sandbank.” It’s better known today as the Gold Coast of Texas, but its identity is still rooted in wildness and age-old solitude.
The Max factor of Dallas; the tacos of Paris; the tales of Urrutia; the Hemingway of Texas; the good word from Houston; the mysteries of the Hueco Tanks.
Fred Cuny, sixth-generation Texan and uncompromising disaster-relief consultant, takes his expertise to the ends of the earth.
Pompeo Coppini’s heroic sculptures and European air were just what Texas’ fledgling gentry was hungry for in 1901. Since then his name has faded from memory, but his works endure.
It all started at my grandmother’s when I was seven years old. No biscuit has since measured up, but my lonely search for that sublime confection continues.
Texas’ morning glory by thirteen photographers.
If it wasn’t for the song, no one would remember Emily Morgan, but she launched a nation by diverting Santa Anna at San Jacinto.
Looking for the essence of Texas in El Paso, the soul of Dr. Red Duke in Houston, the secrets of status in Dallas, and a quirky West Texas empire in Balmorhea.
It’s Houston's driveway, a twenty-mile kaleidoscope of bankers, punkers, strippers, surgeons, students, grackles, and cars.
His first spacecraft blew up on the pad and his primary investor died, but the first free enterprise rocket finally flew from Matagorda.
God created Texas, and then He created people who would love it.
They used to be virtuous and wooden and they were good. Now they’re commercial and plastic and they’re great.
From giant freshwater prawns to bikini-clad coeds, from ancient Indian artifacts to swimming pigs, there’s something for everyone on the San Marcos River.
Bill Clements, unmasked at last.
Camping gets you back to the basics: blisters, chiggers, and, yes, deep satisfaction.
Monsters aren’t nearly as scary as the night they go bump in.
Southwest Fiction might make you think that the region is mostly metropolis and no mesquite. The Guadalupe Mountains of Texas hits a lot of high spots.
Zoos are fine for people, but they make animals go crackers.
Aztec is gripping buts so gory you may have to read it with you eyes closed; Darlin’ Billadds patina to the Wild Bill Hickok legend; as a major American writer, Thomas McGuane has An Outside Chance; Louise Gluck again proves her power as a poet.