Los Miserables
Three academics plumb the rags-to-rags stories that have long been excluded from our state mythology.
Michael Ennis has been a regular contributor to Texas Monthly since 1977. He is the New York Times best-selling author of the historical novels The Malice of Fortune, Duchess of Milan, and Byzantium, which have been published worldwide. He earned his degree in history from the University of California, Berkeley; taught art history at the University of Texas, Austin; and is a former John D. Rockefeller III Foundation Fellow. His nonfiction writing, on subjects ranging from military preparedness and national politics to art and architecture, has won several national awards; been included in the curriculum of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point; and has been published in a number of books and anthologies as well as magazines such as Esquire, ARTnews, and Architectural Digest.
Articles by Michael Ennis
All the Way With LBJ
As five new books make clear, our thirty-sixth president refuses to be consigned to the dustbin of history.
Ich Bin ein Texan
A 181-year-old book reminds us that Texas was once much more German—and far more radical—than we realize.
The White Stuff
The secret history of cotton, the crop that transformed the global economy—and kept Texans in poverty for generations.
Small in the Saddle
Larry McMurtry, Bill Wittliff, and Jeff Guinn turn to familiar turf—the Old West—to challenge old-school readers.
Dallas Flambé
With its tight prose, waitress heroine, and stinging insight into urban life, Merritt Tierce’s debut marks an exciting turn in Texas literature.
Race and Relations
Journalist Chris Tomlinson delves into the parallel histories of two Texas families with the same last name—one black, one white.
The Rough Guide to Frackistan
Energy reporter Russell Gold gives us a reason to give a frak about fracking.
Books
The Rough Guide to Frackistan
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, should rank alongside the smartphone as this young century’s most transformative technology. Over the past decade, so much oil and gas has been unlocked from previously impervious rock that America’s generation-long energy crisis has all but ended. Instead of a crippling strategic vulnerability—dependence on foreign…
Coming to Our Census
Former state demographer Steve H. Murdock is back, with a book that should be required reading for all 26,060,796 of us.
Bipolar Order
Contrary to what the national media would have you believe, Texas is not politically monochromatic. It is, and always has been, a state with two minds.
The Re-Searchers
Why, in books and movies (not to mention politics), we keep returning to the epic frontier struggle between the Comanche and the Texas Rangers.
Paranoia Is the New Stupid
Acting like a rube used to be the best way to get ahead in politics. Now something crazier is required.
Change of Art
Just over forty years ago, Texas was the kind of place dismissed as hopelessly provincial and culturally mediocre. But then came the Kimbell Art Museum.
Arch of Triumph
Dallas’s almost-finished Calatrava bridge may be an emblem of the city’s status. But the smart urban plan for the small neighborhood it leads to says more about the city’s future.
Paint by Numbers
How Jerry Jones made Cowboys Stadium into one of the state’s best art galleries. Seriously!
Reign of Thought
Contrary to our self-mythology, ideas—and the people who wrote them down—have always been central to Texas history.
The 10 Best Buildings in Texas
A tour of our greatest architectural master-pieces—from the Alamo to the World Birding Center—shows how the collision of the Old World and the New forged a unique style on the Texas frontier.
The New New Deal
What University of Texas historian H. W. Brands’s new biography of Franklin Roosevelt tells us about the Obama administration.
End of The Road
During all but two of the past twenty years, someone named Bush had led our nation or led our state. Now we’re moving on.
Bear Market
The historic showdown between Texas and California has been a cold war, a simmering ideological feud between two great powers. And the winner (for now) is . . .
Modern Problems
What Dallas has in common with Beijing—and why their shared vision of the twenty-first-century world must carry the day.
Feature
He Was A Camera
Russell Lee’s rarely seen Texas photographs reveal an artist at the peak of his powers of observation.
Michael Ennis
How We Blew It
Remember all that talk of tipping the balance of history on a fulcrum of those “Texas values” everyone was crowing about?
Michael Ennis
The Mighty Metroplex
Just a few years after nearly being written off the map, the region has become a roaring engine of growth and social transformation.
All Shook Up
Independent candidates for governor won’t win this year, but they’ve certainly upended the established order. Democrats and Republicans, you have only yourselves to blame.
Michael Ennis
My Father’s War
What I learned about Iraq from World War II—and what all the president’s men could learn.
Michael Ennis
T.R. Fehrenbach Is History
He’s still the gold standard by which all chroniclers of our shared experience are judged, but it’s time to look to the new generation. How do his wannabe heirs stack up?
North Toward Home
As surprising as our immigrant-friendliness may be to many, it speaks to who we are. To be a Texan is to inhabit a vast bicultural frontera, one that extends far beyond the Rio Grande.
Culture of Strife
Frozen embryos are destroyed every day in the name of in vitro fertilization. Tell me again what’s so wrong with stem cell research?
What’s the Matter With Dallas?
For starters, even though its self- image is big and brash, it’s the most politically wimpy city in Texas.
Dissing Darwin
Why Texas could lose the biotech revolution—and end up, once again, an economic also-ran.
No Hat, No Cattle
We Texans have long considered ourselves, in mythical terms, old cowhands. But we’re waking up to discover that we’re really city slickers.
The Cowboy Myth
The idea that U.S. policy bears an indelible made-in- Texas stamp is a rare point of bipartisan consensus. But there's nothing inherently Texan about the president's leadership style.
Apocalypse Now
What sets Dallas apart from other sophisticated American cities? Its unique end-of-the-world industry.
The Accidental City
A new anthology of articles about Houston from the journal of the Rice Design Alliance is a sweeping historical overview, a civic memoir, and a municipal self-help guide.
Everybody Loves Ray
As in Nasher, and everybody should. His $70 million sculpture center is the most eagerly anticipated arts opening in Dallas' history.
Prints of a Fellow
The addition of Leo Steinberg's magnificent collection makes it official: UT-Austin's Blanton is one of the best university art museums in the country.
The Minimalist
The real revelation of Donald Judd's early work is how far ahead of its time it looksnot simply its own time, but our time as well.
A Fine Modness
Modernism may yet be proved dead, but if so, it has left an exquisite corpse in Fort Worth's stunning new Modern Art Museum.
Art
Peter’s Principles
Some people look at Houston and see only rough edges. Peter Marzio, the director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, sees a brash upstart that should be proud of its cultural riches.