
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.
Dec 23, 2015 — By Michael Ennis
Three academics plumb the rags-to-rags stories that have long been excluded from our state mythology.
Aug 13, 2015 — By Michael Ennis
As five new books make clear, our thirty-sixth president refuses to be consigned to the dustbin of history.
May 13, 2015 — By Michael Ennis
A 181-year-old book reminds us that Texas was once much more German—and far more radical—than we realize.
Feb 12, 2015 — By Michael Ennis
The secret history of cotton, the crop that transformed the global economy—and kept Texans in poverty for generations.
Oct 13, 2014 — By Michael Ennis
Larry McMurtry, Bill Wittliff, and Jeff Guinn turn to familiar turf—the Old West—to challenge old-school readers.
Aug 5, 2014 — By Michael Ennis
With its tight prose, waitress heroine, and stinging insight into urban life, Merritt Tierce’s debut marks an exciting turn in Texas literature.
Jun 5, 2014 — By Michael Ennis
Journalist Chris Tomlinson delves into the parallel histories of two Texas families with the same last name—one black, one white.
Apr 21, 2014 — By Michael Ennis
Energy reporter Russell Gold gives us a reason to give a frak about fracking.
Apr 8, 2014 — By Michael Ennis
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…
Feb 11, 2014 — By Michael Ennis
Former state demographer Steve H. Murdock is back, with a book that should be required reading for all 26,060,796 of us.
Nov 19, 2013 — By Michael Ennis
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.
Oct 21, 2013 — By Michael Ennis
For half a century the world has regarded the Dallas of 1963 as a city of hate. But as JFK knew when he got there, that wasn’t the whole story.
Jun 10, 2013 — By Michael Ennis
Why, in books and movies (not to mention politics), we keep returning to the epic frontier struggle between the Comanche and the Texas Rangers.
Apr 10, 2013 — By Michael Ennis
Acting like a rube used to be the best way to get ahead in politics. Now something crazier is required.
Feb 12, 2013 — By Michael Ennis
Leadership is lacking in Texas. O Houston, where art thou?
Jan 24, 2013 — By Michael Ennis
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.
Jan 21, 2013 — By Michael Ennis
Sure, Rick Perry doesn't want to expand Medicaid. But can he afford not to?
Jan 21, 2013 — By Michael Ennis
When a third of its citizens vote, can Texas really be called a democracy?
Jan 21, 2013 — By Michael Ennis
America is chasing the myth of Texas. Fortunately, we aren’t.
Jan 21, 2013 — By Michael Ennis
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.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Michael Ennis
How Jerry Jones made Cowboys Stadium into one of the state’s best art galleries. Seriously!
Oct 31, 2012 — By Michael Ennis
Contrary to our self-mythology, ideas—and the people who wrote them down—have always been central to Texas history.
Mar 1, 2009 — By Michael Ennis
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.
Jan 1, 2009 — By Michael Ennis
What University of Texas historian H. W. Brands’s new biography of Franklin Roosevelt tells us about the Obama administration.
May 31, 2008 — By Michael Ennis
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.
Mar 1, 2008 — By Michael Ennis
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 . . .
Oct 31, 2007 — By Michael Ennis
What Dallas has in common with Beijing—and why their shared vision of the twenty-first-century world must carry the day.
Jul 31, 2007 — By Michael Ennis
Where the great silent majority is taking politics, here and elsewhere.
Mar 31, 2007 — By Michael Ennis
Russell Lee’s rarely seen Texas photographs reveal an artist at the peak of his powers of observation.
Mar 31, 2007 — By Michael Ennis
Remember all that talk of tipping the balance of history on a fulcrum of those “Texas values” everyone was crowing about?
Jan 1, 2007 — By Michael Ennis
Just a few years after nearly being written off the map, the region has become a roaring engine of growth and social transformation.
Sep 30, 2006 — By Michael Ennis
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.
Jul 31, 2006 — By Michael Ennis
What I learned about Iraq from World War II—and what all the president’s men could learn.
Jun 30, 2006 — By Michael Ennis
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?
Apr 1, 2006 — By Michael Ennis
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.
Jan 1, 2006 — By Michael Ennis
Rethinking the way we do business—and government—down here.
Sep 30, 2005 — By Michael Ennis
Frozen embryos are destroyed every day in the name of in vitro fertilization. Tell me again what’s so wrong with stem cell research?
Jun 30, 2005 — By Michael Ennis
For starters, even though its self- image is big and brash, it’s the most politically wimpy city in Texas.
Apr 1, 2005 — By Michael Ennis
Why Texas could lose the biotech revolution—and end up, once again, an economic also-ran.
Jan 1, 2005 — By Michael Ennis
We Texans have long considered ourselves, in mythical terms, old cowhands. But we’re waking up to discover that we’re really city slickers.
Sep 30, 2004 — By Michael Ennis
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.
Jun 30, 2004 — By Michael Ennis
What sets Dallas apart from other sophisticated American cities? Its unique end-of-the-world industry.
Dec 1, 2003 — By Michael Ennis
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.
Aug 31, 2003 — By Michael Ennis
As in Nasher, and everybody should. His $70 million sculpture center is the most eagerly anticipated arts opening in Dallas' history.
May 31, 2003 — By Michael Ennis
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.
Apr 1, 2003 — By Michael Ennis
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.
Dec 1, 2002 — By Michael Ennis
Modernism may yet be proved dead, but if so, it has left an exquisite corpse in Fort Worth's stunning new Modern Art Museum.
Aug 31, 2002 — By Michael Ennis
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.
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