May 2012
Features
Over the past fifteen years, John Friend turned his Woodlands–based Anusara style of yoga into an internationally popular brand. Then, in the space of a few weeks, it became hopelessly twisted amid a wild series of accusations of sexual and financial improprieties.
Robert Caro on LBJ. Marcus Luttrell on war. Douglas Brinkley on Walter Cronkite. James Donovan on the Alamo. Steve Coll on ExxonMobil. Ben Fountain on a surreal Dallas Cowboys halftime show. Dan Rather and Sissy Spacek on themselves. For some reason, May has turned out to be a month like no other for Texas-related books. Here’s our handy guide.
The acclaimed author is publishing his first novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. And some of his neighbors may not be happy.
Why doesn’t Texas’s greatest movie actress get the respect she deserves?
The latest Alamo chronicler offers a glimpse of his reference library.
The author of Cronkite answers the question: What’s the most surprising thing you learned about Walter Cronkite?
Six interesting facts about the retired CBS news anchorman found in his new book, Rather Outspoken.
In 2004 Dan Rather tarnished his career forever with a much-criticized report on George W. Bush’s National Guard service. Eight years later, the story behind the story can finally be told: what CBS’s top-ranking newsman did, what the president of the United States didn’t do, and how some feuding Texas pols got the whole ball rolling.
Nearly fifteen years after Richard Linklater and I started talking about turning a TEXAS MONTHLY story into a major motion picture, it’s finally hitting the big screen, with a little help from Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey, Shirley MacLaine—and a seventy-year-old retired hairdresser from Rusk named Kay Baby Epperson.
The author of Lone Survivor still has his gun at the ready.
The author of Private Empire: ExxonMobile and American Power answers the question: In terms of difficulty, how would you compare reporting on Exxon with the reporting you did for your previous book, The Bin Ladens?
Columns
Dear Jim Crane, new owner of the Houston Astros: Please don’t screw things up as badly as the last guy did.
Boot-scooting in the right direction, leaving New York, wondering about the yardman, and trying out the cowgirl look when you’re no longer 25.
Long before Walter Cronkite was the voice of the news, he was just a kid from Houston at the University of Texas, chasing girls, acting in school plays, and drinking cheap beer. Yet Douglas Brinkley, whose new biography of Cronkite will be released this month, argues that it was in Austin that the seeds of one of the greatest careers in American journalism were sown.
My mother-in-law knew how to sew, keep an immaculate house, and dress stylishly. In short, she was nothing like the unpolished young woman who married her son. Perhaps that’s why we loved each other so much.
Reporter
Miscellany
“I commend Paul Burka for bravely identifying who is ultimately responsible for the sorry state of Texas public school financing: the Texas electorate.”
