So Near Yet So Far
Rice was created to be a “university of the first rank.” Is it? Will it ever be?
Rice was created to be a “university of the first rank.” Is it? Will it ever be?
Johnny Chan became a champion through nerve and dedication—and every now and then a few good hands.
The ideal caretaker for your children is a warm, nurturing person who brings order to your chaotic life—and drives you up the wall.
Why NASA uses old-fashioned computers; Exxon points the finger at the feds over the oil spill cleanup; Jim Wright’s real crime.
Rewriting history, bugging the big guys, acknowledging a threat.
Houston mayoral candidate Fred Hofheinz has an incumbent and a rumor to defeat; Phil DeVries has a singing caterpillar to find; Zavala County must make a private prison pay its way; and Lori Johns is out to prove she’s the best woman on the drag strip.
In early 1836, after the fall of the Alamo, a small episode in Texas history revealed an aspect of our character we’d just as soon forget.
Representative Mike McKinney, the only doctor in the House, is battling for legislation to keep country hospitals alive despite a poor prognosis.
They were elderly people, flattered by the attention of a nice young man. But sometimes it’s a mistake to depend on the kindness of strangers.
What do the city of Lubbock, a defunct restaurant, and a submerged neighborhood have in common? They’re all places in somebody’s heart.
In most Texas cities, tortilla making is an endangered family business; in Austin, it’s a thriving family rivalry.
Bad salaries make good politicians.
When the St. Johns returned to their house after having it sprayed for bugs, they discovered why those friendly pest-control people are called exterminators.
As a teenager, I dreamed of the ultimate hot rod. Then I woke up to find I owned the ugliest car in the world.
The Aggies’ vet school is going to the dogs; picture-perfect rivalry in the governor’s race; Lloyd Bentsen wants more money from Texas; New York takeover toughs establish an outpost in Houston.
The Comanches in the present; the skinheads in Dallas, the mess in Texas; the crisis in the prisons.
Windsurfers add sparkle to Corpus Christi Bay; the Johnson family says a poignant farewell to one of its own; the golden arches attain alpine heights—but come crashing down in Houston.
The unlikely twosome of eccentric rocker Doug Sahm and blues champion Clifford Antone has rescued from obscurity a distinctively rhythmic, indisputably raunchy regional sound.
George W. Bush wants to be governor of Texas. He says he’s not following in his father’s footsteps, but his name, his career, and his ideas about politics seem an awful lot like Dad’s.
Among the harsh mountains of Chihuahua, Mennonite immigrants and Tarahumara Indians maintain their ancient ways.
Peanut patties are red, raspas are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are pralines, pecan pie, kolaches, and seven other great Texas desserts.
The current show at Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts brings 150 years of photography into sharp focus.
Sixteen years after Roe v. Wade, all the bitterness and horror of the abortion fight can be found at a single site in Dallas.
Twenty-five years ago, Texans hoped LBJ would lead them into the promised land. They have the same hopes for the new president, but George Bush is making no promises.
In Joe Scruggs’s music Everymom evicts under-the-bed monsters, Everykid remembers on Monday morning the fifteen things he needs for school that day, and Everybody delights in Scruggs’s corny but sensitive portrayal of childhood.
An employee’s vandalism by computer might have gone unpunished but for a rookie prosecutor out to test a new law.
The saga of a man and his helpful insects illustrates the age-old battle between visionaries and bureaucrats.
As Texans’ pride of place rose with the price of oil, collectors scrambled for the few documents of the Texas Revolution. Suddenly there seemed to be plenty to go around. But no one thought to ask why.
In George Bush’s Cabinet, Texans are crawling out of the woodwork. Read about their pasts, their pets, their secret passions.
In the fifties a Baptist minister’s daughters were expected to be models of piety—clean, demure, virginal, and impervious to the lure of secular pleasures like makeup and TV.
Food for thought: agriculture commissioner Jim Hightower may get plowed under; Coastal tries to cut the golden parachute; calling all cars in El Paso.
You probably think that the main reason to go to the Texas Rangers’ Florida training camp is to watch baseball. You’re probably wrong.
Getting bummed out on 1988; separating church and state; facing difficult decisions.
Austin’s homeless find a home sweet home on the lake; Fort Worth’s impresario of white gospel puts on a no-sweat show; Dallas’ Comet crashes; and Houston’s Orange Show marks a decade of—well, orange.
A gallery of nine Texans and their other selves.
Twenty-five years ago, Texans hoped LBJ would lead them into the promised land. They have the same hopes for the new president, but George H. W. Bush is making no promises.
Beyond Cisneros.
New fiction takes the reader on forays into Louisiana swamps, excursions into smoke-filled Austin honky-tonks, and down life’s highway with a lady trucker
The decision by a Chinese plastics company to build a billion-dollar plant in Texas proves that economic development works—but it comes at a high price.
A competency test for colleges; gauging the governor’s race; hard times at Hermann Hospital; what on earth was George Bush thinking about?
Never giving in; making it big; reclaiming a neighborhood.
Looking forward to Jerry Jeff Walker’s second Luckenbach, looking into a new way to settle feuds, and looking back over the career of Texas’ most prolific unknown author.
It took a bit of coaxing, but when R. T. Williams finally sat down at the piano again, the Grey Ghost came back to life.
Bill Clements’ ambitious—and expensive—prison-expansion plan is only a tiny first step toward escaping the overcrowding problem.
A new gambling-cruise-ship enterprise out of Port Isabel makes it possible to spend an evening in a casino while going nowhere in the Gulf.
Every day each of us contributes five pounds to the growing mountain of garbage. Now the mountain looks like a volcano that’s threatening to erupt.
A great big valentine from 95 artists to a San Antonio hospital’s transplant program.
They were the classic Texas Indians—fierce, majestic, and free. Today’s Comanches find their lives defined by legends and bitter truths.
Ranchers hate bobcats. Trappers love their pelts. Both parties have found that there’s more than one reason to skin a cat.