A light snow dusts the sprawling CBS News complex in Hell’s Kitchen, on New York’s West Side, as a figure in a black slouch hat and long trench coat swirls through the Fifty-seventh Street door, bids good cheer to the security guards in the lobby, then vanishes into the bowels of the newsroom: Dan Rather is in top form this morning. He has just returned, after a grueling 44-hour flight, from Southeast Asia, where he presided over CBS News’ coverage of the killer tsunami.

Evan Smith: Why, at this time in your life, have you decided to call it quits at PBS?

At 1:45 p.m. on Friday, July 18, White House communications director Dan Bartlett strode into the James S. Brady Briefing Room to confront a large, hostile, and deeply skeptical group of reporters. The issue in play was an erroneous assertion by George W. Bush in his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." While that statement was true in the narrowest sense— the British had indeed reported it—the U.S.

THE PRECISE LOCATION OF THE center of the universe shifts from day to day; on September 9, it was the restaurant at the Regency Hotel, on Park Avenue in New York. I'd arranged a breakfast interview there with Walter Cronkite, who grew up in Houston and attended the University of Texas before embarking on a long career in journalism that included nineteen years as the anchor of the CBS Evening News.

texasmonthly.com: Where did the idea for the insect-display-case look come from?

Photographer Misty Keasler wants you to know about the people she’s met. She wants you to feel the struggle of the young heroin junkies in Plano. She wants you to see the reflection of a twenty-year-old dying from cancer in Lewisville. She wants you to see the light in the eyes of the impoverished orphans in Romania. She wants to make you think.

LINCOLN PARK IS GONE. DISAPPEARED. We are rolling along in Oscar Casares' maroon Toyota Tacoma, searching for the place where a decent portion of his teenage days was spent shooting hoops, flirting with girls, and picking fights now and then. We pass the Lopez Supermarket, the housing project where his first girlfriend lived, the community clinic where sick people spend entire afternoons in waiting rooms. But no park. In 1998 the city cleared the playground and replaced it with a row of concrete pillars that now extend U.S.

texasmonthly.com: When did you first become interested in photography? What attracted you to the art form?

texasmonthly.com: How has your life changed since Lizzie McGuire?

Hilary Duff: My life has changed tremendously, mostly if I trip or spill something I am nervous everyone saw it! There is a lot of privilege as well as responsibility when you are on TV. I have met amazing people like Nelson Mandela and Steven Tyler but I live a very normal life. I do chores around the house and take care of my pets and go to school like all of my friends.

SEEMS LIKE EVERY FEMALE IN the state, from first lady to floozy, has graced the cover of Texas Monthly since the magazine debuted in 1973. Over the course of 361 issues, including this one, the cover has captured or mirrored the many faces of Texas women, from the traditionally feminine, such as cheerleaders and beauty queens, to the more challengingly modern, like politicians and self-made millionaires. (And yes, there have also been some unsavory types along the way: stripper, cult leader, murderer.)