Behind the Lines
The case against conspiracy.
The case against conspiracy.
Though the leaders of Mexico’s revolution all lived short and violent lives, a handful of those who rode with them have survived to a ripe old age in Texas.
In the small world of country’s New Traditionalism, George Strait and Steve Earle still manage to be worlds apart.
How did bluebonnets and cacti get that glazed look?
Where the heck is Salado, and why are world-famous intellectuals flocking there?
It began in 1865 as a joyous celebration of emancipation. Today young black Texans find the holiday overshadowed by more immediate concerns.
She started out as a wide-eyed Waco cowgirl and ended up a New York speakeasy queen.
Whether a frontiersman needed to skin a bear, chop wood, or fight in a due, Jim Bowie’s weapon was the tool of choice.
Conover Hunt and the Sixth Floor Museum.
Descendants of famous Texans like Sam Houston and Davy Crockett don’t even try to fill their forefathers’ shoes. They just do their best to keep them polished.
Willie Nelson’s true love may have a body that’s worse for the wear, but woe to the man who tries to pick it up.
On the eve of the 1964 national elections, Texas historian J. Evetts Haley published a scathing attack on President Lyndon B. Johnson. The book sold seven million copies, but Johnson still won the race.
For centuries, scientists have searched for the answers to the mystery of Nosehenge. Now—for the first time—the startling truth.
Anne Bass married one of the richest men in America. With his money and her ambition she became an important cultural force in Fort Worth and New York. Life was perfect. Then her husband left her.
The secrets of love seen through a glass, clearly.
Texas Medal of Honor winners remember the day when they were invincible.
He was a master of tall tales and a genius at self-promotion. But was he anything more?
Unlike the Alamo, which can seem as remote and mysterious as Stonehenge, the San Jacinto battlefield has few secrets. Its history lies close at hand.
Blessed art thou, who hath created Tex-Mex.
The race war on the range.
Why do the towns that have oil also have the best football players?
An early castaway described Padre Island as “a wretched, barren sandbank.” It’s better known today as the Gold Coast of Texas, but its identity is still rooted in wildness and age-old solitude.
It began in 1952 as a nostalgic recreation of the old cattle drive. Now it’s a grand annual party stretching across Texas.
The great Texas ranches and how they got that way.
These fourteen Texas sheriffs are everything you thought a sheriff ought to be. But look quick; the old-time county lawman is riding off into the sunset.
Pompeo Coppini’s heroic sculptures and European air were just what Texas’ fledgling gentry was hungry for in 1901. Since then his name has faded from memory, but his works endure.
If it wasn’t for the song, no one would remember Emily Morgan, but she launched a nation by diverting Santa Anna at San Jacinto.
Yes, Virginia Sue, Texas really does have its own holiday traditions.
December 1941 in Clarksville was a time to celebrate peace on earth amid the rumblings of war.
Assassination buffs come in all shapes and convictions—archivists, technologists, mob-hit theorists, and more—but they are all obsessed with Lee Harvey Oswald, and his crime is the focus of their lives.
A great man was dead and an outraged world desperately wanted someplace to lay blame. It chose Dallas and changed the city forever.
Twenty years ago he thrust himself into our lives; he is there yet.
Can you picture Lbj in a Datsun?
If you think Texas is pretty much the same as it was ten years ago, you’re wrong. Nineteen seventy-three remade the state overnight.
The life and times of the cowboy-millionaire hero of a thousand postcards.
Sunny in the morning, sunny in the evening, freezing by suppertime.
It symbolizes either the American dream or the American nightmare—one or the other of which is enveloping Texas.
The lost hopes of places like Belle Plain haunt Texas’ prairies.
Welcome—well, sort of—to San Antonio’s dowager bastion.
When liquor by the drink went into effect in 1971, Texas changed forever.
This clunky piece of machinery made Howard Hughes very rich. It is the first in our series of things that every Texan should know.
When it comes to flops and fiascos, Texans can outdo anyone.
The imminent demise of Austin’s famed music hall already has Texans singing the Armadillo homesick blues.
Although Texans make good friends, they make even better enemies.
Whether you drink champagne or beer, wear diamonds or rhinestones, one thing about Fiesta San Antonio is the same for everyone: it’s fun.
The riddle of the French explorer lies buried beneath the Gulf of Mexico, but what is it, where is it, and why, oh why, are we looking for it?
At the Fort Worth stockyards, cattlemen buy and sell amid the last vestiges of the Old West.
Perhaps, after all, girls should go with boys who chew.
Miles from their nearest neighbors, beset by drought, debt, insects, and government, Panhandle farmers gamble everything to keep alive a tradition they can’t abandon.
It was Memorial Day weekend and the pickings were slim. Most of the ships that normally would have been in port lay anchored in Galveston Bay so they wouldn’t have to pay time and a half to longshoremen. The old longshoreman they called Goat made his rounds, cadging drinks and looking