The Enemy Within
A blundered raid and a botched finale don’t change an essential fact about the Mount Carmel standoff: David Koresh is to blame.
Gary Cartwright earned his BA in journalism at Texas Christian University. He had a distinguished career as a newspaper reporter and as a freelance writer, contributing stories to such national publications as Harper’s, Life, and Esquire. He was a senior editor at Texas Monthly for 25 years, until his retirement in 2010 at age 76. He died in 2017.
Cartwright was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in 1986 in the reporting excellence category. He was the recipient of a Dobie-Paisano fellowship and won the Texas Institute of Letters Stanley Walker award for journalism and the Carr P. Collins Award for nonfiction. He won the 1989 Press Club of Dallas Katie Award for best magazine news story. He also received the 2005 Headliner Club of Austin award for best magazine story. Cartwright wrote several books, including Blood Will Tell, Confessions of a Washed-up Sportswriter, Dirty Dealing, Galveston: A History of the Island, and Heart Wiseguy, a memoir published in 1998. He cowrote three movie scripts, for J. W. Coop (Columbia, 1972); Pair of Aces (CBS TV, 1990), which he also coproduced; and Pancho, Billy and Esmerelda, which he coproduced for his own production company in 1994. He also coproduced Another Pair of Aces for CBS. Blood Will Tell was adapted by CBS TV as a four-hour miniseries in 1994.
A blundered raid and a botched finale don’t change an essential fact about the Mount Carmel standoff: David Koresh is to blame.
The first black man to hold boxing’s heavyweight title is finally getting the respect he deserves. Now all he’s owed is a presidential pardon.
The world’s first hamburger was served in Athens, Texas, no matter what Mr. Cutlets says.
The long, slow, quiet, thoughtful, weird, brilliant, often-interrupted, never-compromised career of John Graves, who died July 30, 2013.
If you’re a half shell fanatic like me, you’ll be just as alarmed as I was to hear that oystermen in Galveston Bay—the source of some of the country’s most delicious mollusks —are still struggling to make it after Hurricane Ike.
More than two decades after he arrived in Austin, Asleep at the Wheel’s Ray Benson still reigns as the king of swing.
Lone Ranger.
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.
The genteel matriarchs of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas are at war—with each other. And this time it's a no-quarter struggle for the group's heart and soul.
Die-hard fans of America’s Team are debating that very question as we speak—and also wondering if the kid from Wisconsin with the buxom distraction can take them to the Super Bowl any faster than, say, Gary Hogeboom did.
Bolstered by his favorite phrase, my son Mark faced life with grace, dignity, and good humor. I knew he’d face death the same way.
When Fast Eddie Garcia was shot to death, San Antonio mourned the loss of not only a man but also a behind-the-scenes power broker at the center of the city’s good ol’ amigo network.
More than anyone, former assistant to the U.S. attorney Bill Johnston was responsible for exposing the FBI’s lies about the final assault on the Branch Davidian compound. Why, then, did his own government go after him?
It took me half my life to figure out that most of what I thought I knew about J. Frank Dobie was wrong.
The case for legalizing marijuana (and no, I haven’t been smoking something).
How about those Cowboys? Ever since the team's egotistical owner, Jerry Jones, fired coach Jimmy Johnson in a fit of pique, the 'Boys have never been on a slippery slope to perdition. But it's die-hard fans like me who are in hell.
If you’re heading to New Orleans and you’ve got five days to spare, don’t fly or drive. Take a trip fit for a king—aboard the Delta Queen .
Blackie Sherrod probably hates the word "retired," but that's what he is nowand newspaper readers across Texas are the poorer for it.
Sure, sure, the newspaper business is dying, and this is bad for freedom, accountability, and democracy itself. But worst of all is what’s happened to sportswriting.
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.
How I learned what to do with the one that didn’t get away.
For longtime TCU fans, the Rose Bowl was a reminder of being snubbed in the school’s heyday. With the victory over Wisconsin, the Horned Frogs have shaken off the ghosts of the past—and taken their rightful place on the national stage.
Bud Shrake’s letters to friends back in Texas during his years in New York show the late novelist in all his ribald, freewheeling glory. And never more alive.
The tragic case of Lloyd and Kim Yarbrough raises an old question: Why doesn’t the decision to die belong to the person who is dying?
Happy Texas Independence Day! Read five stories about our state's history, including this piece about the battlegrounds of Texas, which tell an incredible story of struggle, sorrow, triumph, and terror.
Nobody told me an eyebrow plucking would hurt this much!
Forty years ago, Pete Dominguez and his Mexican restaurants were the toast of Dallas. Now he’s alone, broke, and nearly forgotten.
Roger Clemens may be worthy of the Congressional testimony Hall of Shame, but should we really be so freaked out about his supposed steroid use?
What the double-breasted buffoons in today’s broadcast booths can learn from a legend of the game.
How the owner of the first shopping center in Austin is destroying it—one banned candy bar at a time.
A liberal newspaperman in George W. Bush’s backyard.
It’s the best thing Jerry Jones could do for the Cowboys.
You didn’t think the fight over Austin’s Las Manitas was about a restaurant, did you?
José Cisneros, the legendary illustrator of the Spanish Southwest, is 96, almost blind, and nearly deaf. And, of course, he has no plans to put down his pen.
That old mad dog Carlton Carl takes Martindale. Literally.
Saying good-bye to my dear Phyllis was the hardest thing I’ve ever done—and losing her so suddenly didn’t make it any easier. But I know I’ll see her again someday.
Having suffered through the ineptitudes of the Texas Rangers for nearly three and a half decades, having sat as solemn witness to their stumbling pretenses to be major league material, I assume that the hiring of a 28-year-old to run the team is yet another mistake. Jon Daniels, prove me
Coronary artery disease is an old and much-hated enemy of mine. The beast attacked me without warning in 1988 as I strolled with my Airedales along Austin’s Shoal Creek hike-and-bike trail. Last November—sacre bleu!—it got me again.
Why I love—and why so many of you hate—the People’s Republic of Austin.
The reviews of the Vince Young show are in—and, of course, they’re all raves. Gary Cartwright and Bud Shrake argue that the Texas quarterback is the best ever but wonder if his throwing motion is an obstacle to NFL greatness. Plus: Mack vs. “Delbert.”
A few of the streets near what used to be downtown have familiar names, but Arlington has mutated into a disconnected clump of shopping malls, cul-de-sacs, and gated communities, faceless, soulless neighborhoods that give urban sprawl a bad name.
Three Austin boys + the hatred and intolerance of their Boys State experience = a lesson in today’s democracy.
Why buying a beach house in Galveston may not be the best long-term investment.
Duking it out, after more than fifty years of friendship, over Ann Coulter, Terri Schiavo, the appeal of golf, and, inevitably, the decline of the Cowboys.
Once upon a time I thought it was cool to question God’s existence. Not anymore.
“My hope has always been, for all my flaws and weaknesses, that people will say this: ‘He wanted to be a reporter and he is.’ I think they know that I love this country.” And other reflections on retirement from the broadcast-news icon turned right-wing punching bag.
How I learned to stop worrying and love “blood sport”—or at least understand its appeal.
How can I be a Christian and support legalized abortion? Tough question, but after weeks of soul- searching, I have an answer.
Why isn't the new Dallas Cowboys stadium going to be in, er, Dallas? Blame the collision of an irresistible force (Jerry Jones) with an immovable object (Laura Miller).
Could Ray Fernandez, the grandson of a Mexican American maid, be the rightful heir to the vast Kenedy fortune, including the family's mythic South Texas ranch?