Texas Primer: Barbed Wire
It spelled the end of the open range and the beginning of modern Texas.
It spelled the end of the open range and the beginning of modern Texas.
Fifty years ago LBJ won—some say stole—a U.S. Senate runoff. What happened to the South Texas ballot box that saved his career?…
On March 18, 1937, the residents of New London, southeast of Tyler, endured the worst small-town tragedy in U.S. history: an explosion at the combined junior-senior high school that killed some three hundred students and teachers.
How much did Life pay Abraham Zapruder for the rights to his assassination film?…
I saw my first historical marker as a Cub Scout in Pack 291. Nearly thirty years later, I’m still hooked on the story of Texas.
He was one of the most influential cultural figures in Texas—a generous godfather to a generation of rappers, an entrepreneur of Houston's mean streets, the master of a scene fueled by codeine cough syrup and hip-hop beats. When he overdosed in November at the age of 29, it was easy…
From 3500 BC, when indigenous peoples in Mexico and Central America began cultivating chiles, to 2010, when the Culinary Institute of America opened an expanded campus in San Antonio.
Want to see the Texas of Leadbelly, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mance Lipscomb, and other pioneering musicians of the twentieth century? Your trip through time begins near Washington-on-the-Brazos.
Besieged on all sides, will the Daughters of the Republic of Texas finally lose control of the Alamo? Not if they can help it.
The very spot where William Barrett Travis wrote his famous “victory or death” letter is a Ripley’s Haunted Adventures. And other ways gross commercialization has desecrated the Alamo’s sacred battleground site.
A strand-by-strand look at the roots of a Texas phenomenon.
Working on his memoir one day in 1969, LBJ spoke more frankly into a tape recorder about the Kennedys, Vietnam, and other subjects than he ever had before. The transcript of that tape has never been published—until now. Michael Beschloss explains its historical significance.
Who deserves credit for Lyndon Johnson's newly burnished reputation? Harry Middleton, the director of the LBJ presidential library, who made hours and hours of White House audiotapes public—and in doing so, remade history.
At the port of entry in El Paso, I always tell the agents, “American,” but what I really want to say is “fronterizo”—I’m from both sides.
Searching for the legendary past—and the cosmic future—in my old river city, San Antonio de Béjar.
Yes, we should remember the battle at the center of the Texas Revolution. But we should forget everything we think we know about it.
What’s so important about a stack of wood? Every Aggie knows that the answer is tradition—which is why, after a catastrophe that took the lives of twelve young men and women, the decision of whether to continue, change, or call a halt to the bonfire looms so large at Texas…
History makes no mention of what was one of the most popular all-female country acts ever. Yet the story of the Goree Girls-inmates who banded together in the forties at Texas' sole penitentiary for women—is worth a listen.
A pivotal loss in the 1970 Senate race shaped George Bush’s future. An excerpt from a new book on the 1988 presidential campaign.
A handsome young president, a convertible limousine, a sniper, three shots (we think), and our lives were changed forever. A special report on what is, for many, the defining event of the past fifty years.
JFK was killed by (a) the mob, (b) Castro, (c) the FBI, (d) the CIA, or (e) none of the above? Decide for yourself.
Conspiracy theories: The Shadow Government Theory.
Director Oliver Stone may not be sure who did it or how, but he is sure he knows why.
He’s gone but not forgotten—particularly now, when leadership is in such short supply. Friends and colleagues recall why the late lieutenant governor was one of a kind.
The best way to visit the Capitol, the state’s grandest public building, is to take the 45-minute guided tour. But there is much more to see if you know what to look for, and I’m going to tell you precisely that.
After its recent facelift, the state cemetery has Texas luminaries just dying to get in.
The Texas State Cemetery, home to the final resting places of the celebrated and the notorious, is a walk through time, revealing all that is great, courageous, tragic, pompous, and absurd about Texas.
No one in McAllen saw Irene Garza leave Sacred Heart that night in 1960. The next morning, her car was still parked down the street from the church. She never came home.
How the cosmetically challenged among us manage to save face.
From buckskin to polyester, a look at 166 years of Texas fashion that doesn’t skirt the issues.
Every February, on the weekend of Presidents’ Day, the daughters of Laredo’s most prominent families are presented to society in dresses that cost $20,000 or more at a colonial pageant that is the party of the year.
Simple wooden crosses in Terlingua, carefully delineated stonework in Jefferson: Five great graveyards that run the gamut.
A masterpiece of courthouse architecture in Waxahachie, a handsome jail of native stone in Marfa: Significant structures line the streets of five terrific town centers.
In one year the eyes of the world will turn to Dallas's Dealey Plaza for the fiftieth anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Is the city ready?…
And the story of how I started spelling it that way (with the accent) begins with a kidnapping.
Contrary to our self-mythology, ideas—and the people who wrote them down—have always been central to Texas history.
A group of Galvestonians work to open Jack Johnson Park, the city's latest effort to reclaim its most famous son since turning its back on him a century ago. …
A $2 million bronze monument honoring Tejanos was unveiled at the Capitol last week. Here's why it's historically significant to all Texans.
In this excerpt from Indomitable Will: LBJ in the Presidency, letters, interviews, and historic documents offer a revealing glimpse into the stormy relationship between Lyndon Johnson and the Kennedys.
On National Signing Day, Ivan Maisel recalls LBJ's failed attempt to get Joe Washington to play for Darrell Royal at the University of Texas.