In this exclusive excerpt from 'Ticker: The Quest to Create an Artificial Heart,' world-renowned Houston surgeon Bud Frazier races to help an ailing patient by implanting a revolutionary device that may one day save millions of lives.
By Mimi Swartz
Outside a cookie shop in one of Houston’s most idyllic neighborhoods, a West University Place council member spied Trump’s name on a teenager’s shirt and yelled a few of the president’s worst words at her. Then the internet found out. It's springtime in the age of hysteria.
By Mimi Swartz
Abbott’s school safety plan could land us back in darker times.
By Mimi Swartz
As I have aged and faced my own challenges as a female on this planet, I have come to a different understanding of Barbara Bush.
By Mimi Swartz
Why the remarkable heroism displayed by my fellow Houstonians will be required for years to come.
By Mimi Swartz
Dear Governor Abbott,I just happened to catch your remarks from yesterday afternoon, the ones you made while visiting the Austin gun range to sign the bill that lowers the cost of gun licenses in Texas. The Dallas Morning News story I read said that you celebrated by firing a 9 mm
By Mimi Swartz
A heart surgeon leads his city to the forefront of medical innovation.
By Mimi Swartz
Public school parents with special-ed kids often find themselves squaring off against school districts and the taxpayer-funded lawyers who protect them.
By Mimi Swartz
Anna Nicole Smith rose from a small town girl in Mexia to an icon, but her demons followed her far beyond Texas.
By Mimi Swartz
Executive editor Mimi Swartz says goodbye to Tom Curtis, a writer, reporter, and former Texas Monthly contributor, who died earlier this week.
By Mimi Swartz
in a state known for austerity, how can Texas's largest cities be nearly broke?
By Mimi Swartz
Houston says farewell to its legendary heart surgeon.
By Mimi Swartz
Scandal
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November 23, 2016
Sherron Watkins, fifteen years later.
By Mimi Swartz
Winning the MacArthur “genius grant” was a career highlight for Rice professor Rebecca Richards-Kortum. But it was a visit to Malawi that changed her life.
By Mimi Swartz
Why do so few novelists write about Houston?
By Mimi Swartz
Since he finished his prison sentence, Andy Fastow, Enron’s disgraced CFO, has been quietly trying to make amends. But is the public ready to accept his apology?
By Mimi Swartz
Mimi Swartz discovers the Texas she remembers in a small cafe in Cisco.
By Mimi Swartz
Houston greets its new mayor, Sylvester Turner, with a host of big-city problems.
By Mimi Swartz
Houston’s super-rich are learning to love the brand-new, very ritzy, much-heralded River Oaks District. (Maybe.)
By Mimi Swartz
HERO evokes another era—one we shouldn’t be proud of.
By Mimi Swartz
The election only determines who will lead the nation's fourth-largest city, no big deal.
By Mimi Swartz
How did smog-breathing, gridlock-prone Houston become the newest natural wonder of the urban world?
By Mimi Swartz
Mimi Swartz cross-examines the Court of Criminal Appeals’ unprecedented sanctions against a death penalty lawyer.
By Mimi Swartz
For the first time in its history, Blue Bell is in a right sticky mess.
By Mimi Swartz
Mimi Swartz wonders why, in this day and age, there are so few Hispanics serving on the boards of Texas nonprofits.
By Mimi Swartz
The story of Texas can be reduced to one sentence: somebody has something somebody else wants and will put up a fight to get.In the beginning, these fights were over land. The Spanish explorers came here in the 1500’s; ignoring native peoples, they claimed a vast region that included
By Texas Monthly and Mimi Swartz
Mimi Swartz on what Houston’s fractious mayoral race says about the city.
By Mimi Swartz
Bryan Cranston’s portrayal of LBJ was just another sad caricature of what the world thinks a Texan ought to act like.
By Mimi Swartz
Mimi Swartz on how the rise of our cities will lead to a new kind of government.
By Mimi Swartz
Rachel Bonyton's film "Big Men" follows Dallas oilman Jim Musselman as he contracts with the government of Ghana to find and develop the first oil field in that country.
By Mimi Swartz
First Bettina Siegel went after the beef industry. Now she’s tackling the Chinese government.
By Mimi Swartz
Woodland Heights may not be the fanciest neighborhood in Houston, or the quietest, or the coolest (and it can be a little full of itself), but it’s mine.
By Mimi Swartz
Role Reversal
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January 14, 2014
If you have kids, being a caregiver to an elderly parent may feel a bit familiar.
By Mimi Swartz
Is Charlotte Allen Houston's true founder?
By Texas Monthly and Mimi Swartz
The lessons of a family heirloom.
By Mimi Swartz
Houston put a man on the moon and performed the first artificial heart transplant. So why can’t it save the Eighth Wonder of the World?
By Mimi Swartz
Update
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November 15, 2013
Bev Kearney, UT's former celebrated track-and-field coach, filed suit against the university yesterday. The smart thing to do would be to make the whole thing go away—though it might benefit the larger world of college athletics to have the whole sordid mess played out in public.
By Mimi Swartz
Last year, UT forced prominent track-and-field coach Bev Kearney to resign because of her affair with a student. Now she’s fighting back, with a lawsuit that opens a window onto the world of high-stakes collegiate athletics—a window that many people would just as soon keep closed.
By Mimi Swartz
As my son graduates from college, I’m learning to say goodbye to him—again.
By Mimi Swartz
The estate sale from the residence of the late Mildred Yount Manion II, an heiress from an "Important Texas Oil Family," proved too hard to resist.
By Texas Monthly and Mimi Swartz
San Antonio
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January 24, 2013
I used to think my hometown was a sleepy, slow-moving place where nothing much would ever happen. But forty years after I left, the city is a bustling, economically vibrant, progressive place I hardly recognize—in a good way.
By Mimi Swartz
Houston and that brilliant artist of light James Turrell have proved to be an enduring couple, what with the California native’s inspiring work at the Live Oak Friends Meeting house and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. But the Skyspace installation Turrell created to honor Rice University’s centennial is perhaps
By Mimi Swartz
Behind the Lines
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January 21, 2013
For too many veterans, the emotional scars of war go untreated. An innovative group of Harris County politicians, judges, attorneys, and health care workers—most of whom are veterans themselves—is aiming to fix that.
By Mimi Swartz
The author of Private Empire: ExxonMobile and American Power answers the question: In terms of difficulty, how would you compare reporting on Exxon with the reporting you did for your previous book, The Bin Ladens?
By Mimi Swartz
In 1996 a powerful South Texas ranching clan accused ExxonMobil of sabotaging wells on the family’s property. Thirteen years, millions of dollars in legal fees, and one state Supreme Court opinion later, the biggest oil field feud of its time is still raging.
By Mimi Swartz
Over the past fifteen years, John Friend turned his Woodlands–based Anusara style of yoga into an internationally popular brand. Then, in the space of a few weeks, it became hopelessly twisted amid a wild series of accusations of sexual and financial improprieties.
By Mimi Swartz
Web Exclusive
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January 21, 2013
The New Yorker writer talks about his latest book, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power.
By Mimi Swartz
Terry Grier is the hard-charging, reform-minded, optimistic superintendent of the largest school district in the state. He’s also the most divisive, embattled, and despised man in Houston. Did it have to be this way?
By Mimi Swartz
Feature
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January 21, 2013
For more than seven decades, Camp Mystic has been one of the prettiest, happiest, and most exclusive destinations in Texas. But after a bitter, multimillion-dollar legal battle, the very thing that the owners cherished—family—may be the force that tears the camp apart for good.
By Mimi Swartz
Feature
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January 21, 2013
There are prettier women in Hollywood. There are more-talented actresses on TV and in the movies. So how to explain the charmed, celebrated existence that is la vida Longoria?
By Mimi Swartz