Making the Grade
Contributing editor Jan Jarboe Russell grew up in East Texas and joined Texas Monthly in the 1980s. Throughout her thirteen years writing for the magazine, she has covered subjects ranging from H-E-B’s “grocery wars” to a sanctuary for silent prayer in South Texas. Russell has also written for the San Antonio Express-News, Slate, and the New York Times. Her books include Lady Bird, a biography of Lady Bird Johnson; Eleanor in the Village, a portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt’s time in Greenwich Village; and The Train to Crystal City, a New York Times best-seller about a family internment camp in Texas during World War II. The Train to Crystal City won the Carr P. Collins Award in 2016.
Russell is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the Philosophical Society of Texas. She received Gemini Ink’s Award for Literary Excellence in 2018, and she is a member of the Daily Texan Hall of Fame at the University of Texas at Austin, her alma mater. She lives in San Antonio.
On a sleepy day last September, two women came barreling down Route 66 with five police cars in hot pursuit. A tiny Panhandle town will never be the same.
Forget the Alamo. The real spirit and history of Texas come alive at San Antonio’s eighteenth-century churches.
Frank talk about LBJ’s life, JFK’s death, the promise of Hillary Clinton, the perils of Oliver North—and more.
Keeping up the good fight.
A Baptist under fire.
After years of maintaining perfect public composure, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison now wears her ambition on her sleeve.
More people visit San Antonio’s River Walk than the Alamo. Here’s why—our complete guide to the sights, restaurants, shops, and lore of Texas’ most popular urban park.
These days everybody wants a piece of the Alamo. Can the Daughters of the Republic of Texas hang on to their sacred shrine?
A look back at San Antonio Fiesta gowns reveals how the dresses have gone from elegant to excessive.
He’s a budget cutter in an era of consumption, a conservative Democrat in a party gone soft, a good ol’ boy with no polish or flash. So why is everyone buzzing about Texas comptroller John Sharp?
How has Attorney General Dan Morales performed in his first term? Indecisively.
Henry Bonilla is our first Hispanic Republican in congress. He won’t be our last.
He was no William Barrett Travis, but in many ways, the leader of the Brand Davidians was an archetypal Texan to the end.
What’s behind the Bureau’s bashing of its director, former San Antonio judge William Sessions? Go ask Alice.
Since AIDS infected their lives, the proud, the deeply religious Allens have been left to ponder the eternal questions of faith and suffering.
He waffled about the Senate seat, then sought safe harbor in Bill Clinton’s cabinet. Why did Henry Cisneros choose HUD over headlines? Only he knows for sure.
Sharpstown used to be an affluent suburb. Today it’s where the world has come to live.
Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez has spent most of his 76 years swinging wildly at political heavyweights. Now he’s finally landed a punch—on the president of the United States.
Texas scientist Arnold Lockshin defected to Russia to find a new life. Has the collapse of communism shattered his dreams?
Is Ann Richards planning a historic move from the statehouse to the White House?
The fire of democracy has yet to warm Moscow’s soul.
Maybe not. But then again, the veteran Texas pol has never taken no for an answer.
The politics of trauma.
When a few minutes matter, an EMS helicopter can make the difference between life and death.
“Just how hard can it be to build a playground?” I asked. The answer: Harder than anything I’ve ever tried before.
Pray for Baylor. The Baptists are calling each other flat-earthers and liberal parasites, and the school they call Jerusalem on the Brazos is caught in the middle.
Once part of a vast South Texas ranch, Lebh Shomea is a spiritual retreat where pilgrims listen to what absolute quiet has to say.
Follow us for a great vacation, minus something all tourists can do without—crowds.
“Guys like me like Iraq,” says Houston oilman Oscar Wyatt. “That’s the way the real world works, baby.”
You can take the girl out of East Texas, but you can’t take East Texas out of the girl.
My daughter’s first day of kindergarten was hard—on me.
Henry Catto’s friends knew that one day he would be appointed to the Court of St. James’s. What they didn’t guess is that when the time came, his wife, Jessica, wouldn’t join him.
Revealing profiles of Ann Richards and Clayton Williams raise the question: How about none of the above?
By Mimi Swartz and Jan Jarboe Russell
Onward to the past.
A Texas businessman launches his one-man invasion of post-Communist Romania.
A modest Catholic boys’ school in El Paso could teach public schools a lesson or two about how to provide a solid education on a limited budget and send 98 percent of their students off to college.
With Henry Cisneros out of office, opponents shoot down a tax increase, and San Antonio retreats to 1980.
The eldest son of Trammell Crow used his money for drugs, guns, and high living. His wife spent a fortune on personal trainers and self-promotion. Now they’re squaring off in an L.A. divorce court.
The guy whose name is synonymous with swindling is finally a free man—but it may not last.
Kids in T-shirts bearing political slogans, ideological confrontations in the supermarket, skirmishes at the PTA. Welcome to the battle between moms who work and moms who don’t.
One man’s obsession with kicking Perrier in the derriere.
Heloise, America’s best-known homemaker, has a dirty little secret: she hates to clean house. If you hate it too, she’s convinced that you need her more than ever.
You see them on TV, adorable youngsters asking to be adopted. But the dreadful odyssey of the Wednesday’s Child rarely has a made-for-television happy ending.
San Antonio is shameless over Shamu and Sea World.
Times are rotten for refineries.
Once an oil-field service boomtown, Alice doesn’t live well anymore.
Despite all the mewling from the oil patch, there are still ways to make money at $15 a barrel. Here’s our guide to surviving the terrible teens.