It's August in Texas. The dog days of summer are barking which means it's time to grab your loved ones and hop the first plane out of state. And you shouldn't go just anyplace. We're thinking of five weekend destinations in particular. Bag packed already?

Ten years ago, on a mountaintop in Africa, about to be burned alive by tribal warriors, a teenager saved himself the only way he knew how. Even today, he wonders why he survived.

Photographer Kenny Braun has been surfing the Gulf Coast for about thirty years. So naturally, when the water's just right, he grabs his . . . camera.

If you've ever thought of donating your body to science, read what happened at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston—and then ask yourself if a good, old-fashioned burial might not be a better idea.

Audra Thomas can't read these words and, in a few months, wouldn't remember them anyway. Nevertheless, she has an extraodinary sense of the world around her—and of herself.

Stephen Graham Jones's All the Beautiful Sinners is a wild-eyed thriller; Amanda Eyre Ward's Sleep Toward Heaven is a tale of grief, forgiveness, and the death penalty.

Rice guys finish first.

Why yellow-cheese enchiladas, chile con carne, and puffy tacos aren't Mexican food: A short course on the cuisine that was fusion before fusion was hip.

Historically, Southeast Texas and cancer have gone together like, well, pollution and disease. I wish I could say things were different today.

For as long as there has been a Texas, there have

been dry spells when people wished it would rain. One

huckster actually tried to make it happen—with

the financial backing of Congress.

Clifford Antone gets back in the club.

Larry Dierker and Tom Schieffer play ball.

The toughest cookies I know.