authors

Jake Silverstein

Jake Silverstein is Senior Editor at Texas Monthly and writes regularly for Harper’s Magazine, where he is a Contributing Editor. He was born in Oakland, California, in 1975, and since then has spent time in Connecticut; New York City; Marfa; New Orleans; Roanoke, Virginia; and Zacatecas, the highest capital city in Mexico and a cold place to spend winter. He received an M.A. in English from Hollins University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. He began his writing career as a reporter at Marfa’s Big Bend Sentinel, where one day he dug up an old letter to the editor about the mysterious demise of Ambrose Bierce. His investigation into the letter’s clues became a magazine piece, "The Devil and Ambrose Bierce," which was selected to appear in The Best American Travel Writing 2002. Another story, "Highway Run," about La Carrera Panamericana, a road race across Mexico, received the 2007 PEN/USA Journalism Award. He lives in Austin, where he’s working on a novel about journalism that is exactly fifty percent factual.

Features

BBQ08

Eighteen hungry reviewers. 14,773 miles driven/flown. 341 joints visited. Countless bites of brisket, sausage, chicken, pork, white bread, potato salad, and slaw—and vats of sauce—ingested. There are only fifty slots on our quinquennial list of the best places to eat barbecue in Texas. Only five of those got high honors. And only one (you’ll never guess which one in a million years) is the best of the best. June 2008

Spurs of the Moment

These practical accessories of the cowboy lifestyle are some of the world’s most-sought-after Western collectibles—and every pair has a story. December 2006