Harry Hurt III is an award-winning investigative journalist and former New York Times columnist. He is the author of seven nonfiction
books, including the best-selling Texas Rich, the saga of the H.L. Hunt family oil and silver dynasty. He has contributed articles on crime, business, and other topics to Esquire, Fortune, Newsweek, Texas Monthly, Self, Playboy, and Sports Illustrated and appeared in television, video, and webcasts on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNBC, Yahoo News, nytimes.com, and elsewhere.
As the man known to the world as Dallas's J. R. Ewing fends off throat cancer, he gears up to reprise the role that turned him into an icon and looks back on one of the most extraordinary—and eccentric—lives in show business.
Oil patch old-timers said to stay away from the Austin chalk. But a few feisty newcomers refused to listen and cashed in for millions.
I grew up playing alongside some of the best Texas golfers of my generation. Then I started to lose my grip.
It doesn’t matter that his most famous pupil was shark- bitten at the Masters. Butch Harmon is still Texas’ hottest golf pro since Harvey Penick.
The continuing saga of the Hermann estate scandal was a shocking lesson in how Houston’s most respected philanthropists, civic leaders, and biggest deal makers had abused their power.
The Hermann estate scandal exposed Houston’s most powerful deal makers, most respected philanthropists, and leading lawyers to the harsh glare of publicity. It was a shocking lesson in the abuses of power.
So. Ralph Sampson listens to Grover Washington and Akeem Olajuwon craves Chinese food. Now you know.
Kung’s underground hideaway; Dallas’ Cadillac wars; the Panhandle’s art terrorists; Houston’s poet-laureate; Austin’s airport quandary.
So you think that OPEC controls the price oil and that the glut is hurting everybody in the oil business? Wrong. Traders on the international spot market are pulling the strings and getting rich in the process.
Hundreds of new computer companies have made Texas the likely successor to California’s Silicon Valley, and it all started with two firms in Dallas.
Great expectations for oilmen; sartorial bargains for Brownsville; a medical controversy for Alpine; vexing questions for hunters; the ultimate who’s who for chickens.
Are eye surgeons miraculously changing the lives of folks with glasses as thick as Coke-bottle bottoms, or are they just making themselves rich?
Like the hero of a boys’ novel, George Bush moved from the East to the wild and woolly West. He wanted to prove himself, by golly, to Yale, Procter & Gamble, and the old man.
In which John Howard, our toughest athlete, goes after a world bicycle record and hopes America will care.
One man’s ludicrous attempts to trace the origin of a joke led him to a simple truth: life is funny.
Dale Steffes can predict the future of the oil business. So why do the majors turn a deaf ear? Because, says Steffes, the news is all bad.
How a band of thrill-seekers called BASE made jumping off Texas’ tallest building the ultimate urban adventure.
Coastal Corporation’s mastermind, Oscar Wyatt, keeps everyone guessing these days—from the IRS to society columnists to stock analysts.
Andrew Jefferson was on his way up in the judicial system. Larry Cager was a rising star in the Houston Area Urban League. Together they were giving the city’s black population the leadership it had always needed. And then along came trouble.
Take the “Art of Negotiating” seminar, and you too can learn to wheel and deal with a smile.
In the southeast corner of Texas, more people get cancer than anywhere else in the state. Why?
Dallas was in an ugly mood in November 1973, and non one had done more to create that mood than H.L. Hunt.
Oil patch old-timers said to stay away from the Austin chalk. But a few feisty newcomers refused to listen and cashed in for millions.
H. L. Hunt not only left his sons with a few hundred million dollars each to carry them through life but he also taught them the Five Commandments that had made him rich.
Two novels with novel views of frontier days. And, Howard Hughes revisited by two reporters who leave no stone of his rocky history unturned.
Oveta Culp Hobby has gone from a country town to a position of power and wealth. What she hasn’t done will also be her legacy.
Give us your tired and freezing Yankees, tour studious Arabs, tour ambitious young hustlers just blown into town, and we will rent them one bedroom and a bath for $215.
The feuding over H. L. Hunt’s vast fortune is a family affair, and what a family!
It is boorish, cluttered, aggravating, rich, beautiful, explosive, titillating, cosmopolitan, endearing, and has a full head of steam.
In pursuit of the elusive billionaire’s final mystery: who’ll get his money?
The battles in John Connally’s trial were fought before the jury, but the war may have been won offstage.
