So You Want to Be Chairman of Exxon?
How the world’s largest corporation decides who will make it too the top—and who won’t.
Articles by Nicholas Lemann
Lily Buds, Tree Ears, and Fish Sauce
With just a nip of nuoc mam you’ll be on your way to the cooking frontier of Vietnamese food.
Viet-Tex Redfish Noodle Soup
With just a nip of nuoc mam you’ll be on your way to the cooking frontier of Vietnamese food.
On Assignment: Picture This
The Standard Oil Collection captured details of everyday life in the forties and, in 1981, helped us to understand modern Texas.
Should This Man Be President?
For all his integrity and noble intention, George Bush has yet to prove he’s got the agenda of a true statesman.
Make It Fresh, Make It Simple, and Make It Good
That may sound easy, but the combined constraints of the marketplace and the refrigerator’s contents make it a neat trick to put a satisfying meal on the table.
The Way It’s Going to Be
Turn off the TV. Go fishing. Here’s the inside story of what will happen at the convention, complete with Nancy Reagan’s tacky visit to a bowling alley.
Big Oil Paranoia
Robert Sherrill’s Oil Follies of 1979-1980 leaves no detail unremarked in its effort to pin the blame on Big Oil; in Ronnie Dugger’s On Reagan the author is as unbending an ideologue as his subject is.
The Gittings People
Shoot enough portraits of Texans, and you’ll have made a portrait of Texas.
The New Dominion
Things are looking good for the Sunbelt, says political prognosticator Kevin P. Phillips. Unfortunately, things are looking bad for America.
Texas Primer: The Tract House
It symbolizes either the American dream or the American nightmare—one or the other of which is enveloping Texas.
The Architects
Welcome to Houston, the cutting edge of architecture. The local boys are turning a gentlemen’s profession into a business, the stylish out-of-towners are creating a new aesthetic, and neither group is filled with admiration for the other.
Texas Primer: The Hughes Drill Bit
This clunky piece of machinery made Howard Hughes very rich. It is the first in our series of things that every Texan should know.
Texas, 1945 Or The Sad Cowboy
In a faraway archive we found the best photographs of Texas ever taken, never befor published in a large group. Together, they show every part of the state as it entered the modern age. And each one has a story behind it.
Gone To Texas
Thousands of people from the North, broke and out of work, are streaming into the state. This is the true story of two of them who abandoned Detroit for Houston, learned about cockroaches, tacos, and freeways, and finally discovered happiness in broken air conditioners.
Country Boy
Texas Cities are full of people who grew up in the country - and want everybody they meet to know it.
Life Got You Down
Don’t despair, learn to Think Positive! Success and happiness are only a seminar, a cassette library, and several hundred dollars away!
The Radner Papers
A legendary event in the legendary lives of a legendary Texas family.
The Right Wings
In his new book Tom Wolfe poses this question: were the Mercury astronauts men or monkeys? Thomas Thompson changes his journalistic setting from Houston to the far East to produce a book about an astonishing criminal.
Super Medicine
At the Texas Medical Center the best hospitals, doctors, researchers, and medical technology anywhere in the world have combined to transform doctors from healers into superstars.
A Call to Farms
The Rockefellers are coming, and J.C. Lewis thinks they’re after the American farmer.
So You Want to Be Chairman of Exxon?
How the world’s largest corporation decides who will make it too the top—and who won’t.