Texas History
Texas History
July 15, 2013
Singin’ on the Range
At the Fort Griffin Fandangle, Texas’s oldest outdoor musical, an all-amateur local cast reenacts its own bloody history.
Texas History
June 10, 2013
Auf Wiedersehen to a Dialect
When the local vernacular dies, what goes with it?
News & Politics
May 6, 2013
Discovering LBJ’s Austin
The city held a special place in Lyndon Baines Johnson’s heart, and a number of the places significant in his life there are still around.
Texas History
March 11, 2013
Sarah Haldeman, Presidential Archivist
“I get to see things other people don’t get to see.”
Texas History
February 25, 2013
“Victory or Death” Letter Returns to the Alamo
For the first time since it was penned by commander William Barret Travis 177 years ago.
Arts & Entertainment
February 17, 2013
Matthew McConaughey Has a Presidents’ Day Gift For You
The Texas actor pays tribute to a fellow Hill Country native.
News & Politics
February 12, 2013
Sons of Sam
Leadership is lacking in Texas. O Houston, where art thou?
Texas History
January 23, 2013
The Walking Deadline
For decades, the state’s big urban newspapers helped bind together the inhabitants of our major cities. Now those papers are threatened by a rapidly evolving (some might say collapsing) business model. Is there hope for daily journalism in Texas?
Texas History
January 21, 2013
People We’ll Miss
Big Tex will be back. Sadly, we cannot the say same of Larry Hagman, Darrell Royal, Amarillo Slim, Leslie, and the many other Texans we lost in 2012.
Profile
January 21, 2013
Trigger: The Life of Willie Nelson’s Guitar
Most guitars don’t have names. This one has a voice and a personality, and bears a striking resemblance to his owner.
Texas History
January 21, 2013
The Children of Texas
I was never certain how to explain the importance of the state to my three daughters. Now that I have two grandsons—named Mason and Travis, no less—I’ve realized something that I should have known all along.
Texas History
January 21, 2013
When the Sky Ran Dry
Bad as the current drought is, it has yet to match the most arid spell in Texas history. Nearly two dozen survivors of the fifties drought remember the time it never rained.
Texas History
January 21, 2013
The Most Trusted Freshman in America
Long before Walter Cronkite was the voice of the news, he was just a kid from Houston at the University of Texas, chasing girls, acting in school plays, and drinking cheap beer. Yet Douglas Brinkley, whose new biography of Cronkite will be released this month, argues that it was in
Texas History
January 21, 2013
A Q&A With Michael Hall
The senior editor on following the paper trail of Texas history, learning about Jack Johnson sparring with “Chrysanthemum Joe” Choynski, and researching his own family roots.
Texas History
January 21, 2013
The Paper Chase
Houston attorney Bill Kroger and state Supreme Court chief justice Wallace Jefferson are on a mission to rescue thousands of crumbling, fading, and fascinating legal documents from district and county clerks’ offices all over the state. Can they save Texas history before it’s too late?
Texas History
January 21, 2013
A Q&A With Katy Vine
The senior editor on attending a Civil War reenactment, preserving history, and standing inside the Globe of Death.
Texas History
January 21, 2013
The Skirmish Will Be Followed by a Ladies’ Tea
The Civil War may be 150 years old, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still stir up a fuss (Confederate license plate, anyone?). Just ask one of the hundreds of very accurately uniformed reenactors who descend on Jefferson every year to die for the cause.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
Ring of Fire
On November 18, 1999, at 2:42 a.m., the most passionately observed collegiate tradition in Texas—if not the world—came crashing down. Nearly sixty people were on top of the Texas A&M Bonfire when the million-pound structure collapsed, killing twelve, wounding dozens more, and eventually leading to the suspension of the ninety-year-old
Texas History
January 20, 2013
Texas Primer: Barbed Wire
It spelled the end of the open range and the beginning of modern Texas.
Politics & Policy
January 20, 2013
Go Ask Alice
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?
Texas History
January 20, 2013
“Oh, My God! It’s Our Children!”
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.
News & Politics
January 20, 2013
Abraham Zapruder
How much did Life pay Abraham Zapruder for the rights to his assassination film?
Texas History
January 20, 2013
Time Will Tell
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.
Feature
January 20, 2013
The Slow Life and Fast Death of DJ Screw
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
Texas History
January 20, 2013
Key Moments in Mexican Food History
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.
Music
January 20, 2013
Birthplaces of the Blues
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.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
No Retreat! No Surrender!
Besieged on all sides, will the Daughters of the Republic of Texas finally lose control of the Alamo? Not if they can help it.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
You Aren’t Here
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.
Feature
January 20, 2013
Hooray for Big Hair!
A strand-by-strand look at the roots of a Texas phenomenon.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
Lyndon Johnson on the Record
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.
News & Politics
January 20, 2013
The Man Who Saved LBJ
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.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
Masquerader of The Lost Ark
Who came first—Indiana Jones of Hollywood or Vendyl Jones of Arlington, the archaeologist who has spent years trying to dig up the fabled Ark of the Covenant?
Texas History
January 20, 2013
A River Runs Through It
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.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
City of Dreams
Searching for the legendary past—and the cosmic future—in my old river city, San Antonio de Béjar.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
Styles and Styles of Texas
The thirty Texans with the most iconic, unforgettable, eye-popping looks, from Davy Crockett to Beyoncé.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
The Alamo Should Never Have Happened
Yes, we should remember the battle at the center of the Texas Revolution. But we should forget everything we think we know about it.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
The Aggie Bonfire Tragedy
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
Texas History
January 20, 2013
O Sister, Where Art Thou?
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.
Books
January 20, 2013
Nice Guys Finish Last
A pivotal loss in the 1970 Senate race shaped George Bush’s future. An excerpt from a new book on the 1988 presidential campaign.
News & Politics
January 20, 2013
The Assassination at 35
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.
News & Politics
January 20, 2013
The Conspiracy Theories
JFK was killed by (a) the mob, (b) Castro, (c) the FBI, (d) the CIA, or (e) none of the above? Decide for yourself.
News & Politics
January 20, 2013
Conspiracy A-Go-Go
Conspiracy theories: The Shadow Government Theory.