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.
Books
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.
