The Long, Lonesome Road
Fred Thomas was young, poor, and black. Not only was he afflicted with the terror of schizophrenia, he was also faced with the chaos of the Texas mental health system.
Former senior editor Joe Nocera was born in Rhode Island and wrote and edited at Texas Monthly between 1982 and 1986. His October 1982 feature, “It’s Time to Make a Deal,” about T. Boone Pickens’s first big takeover attempt, was the story that launched his career as a business journalist. Nocera has written for Washington Monthly; Esquire; GQ; Fortune, where he was the editorial director; and the New York Times, where he spent time as a business columnist and an opinion columnist.
Nocera has won multiple business-writing awards and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in the commentary category in 2007. His 1994 book, A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class, won the Helen Bernstein Book Award as the best nonfiction book of 1995. Indentured: The Inside Story of the Rebellion Against the NCAA, which he cowrote, won the 2017 PEN/ESPN Award for literary sports writing. He also wrote and narrated the podcast The Shrink Next Door, which won a Webby Award in 2020 and was adapted into an Apple TV+ miniseries in 2021. During Nocera’s time in Texas, sources who discovered where he was born inevitably said, “Son, we’ve got ranches bigger than Rhode Island.”
Fred Thomas was young, poor, and black. Not only was he afflicted with the terror of schizophrenia, he was also faced with the chaos of the Texas mental health system.
Up close and extremely personal with Boone Pickens, the takeover titan who changed Texas business.
Former UT dean John Silber's tough talk is about to make him the next governor of Massachusetts.
The Harris Count Administration Building isn’t big enough for both Jon Lindsay and Mike Driscoll; Ray Perryman, a reporter’s best friend; a lucky accident brought Ethiopians—and Ethiopian restaurants—to Dallas.
Will Shelby Coffey lead the Dallas Times-Herald to victory? Will Muse aficionados ever find happiness aloft again? Will Tommy Pierce keep real-estating and a-rocking?
People who have watched a certain prime-time soap opera think they know what goes on at the Petroleum Club. They don’t.
An old hand at Pickens-watching reveals the key to the Amarillo oilman’s corporate-takeover antics.
Assailed by presidents, skewered by senators, decried by the New York Times, the oil depletion allowance has survived it all. It helps to have friends in high places.
A new Henry Lee Lucas mystery in Lubbock
He changed the face of Texas by building warehouses that looked like office buildings. Then he built office buildings that looked like warehouses.
New parents, beware! The only thing I got out of my six Lamaze classes was permission to enter the delivery room with my wife.
Four critical mistakes forced Texas Instruments to pull the plug on the home computer that it had once expected would dominate the market.
A heated race for the Senate; a leisurely trip to Astrotown; a cool master of Dallas protocol; a steel-industry success story in Seguin.
Robert Sherrill’s Oil Follies of 1979-1980 leaves no detail unremarked in its effort to pin the blame on Big Oil; in Ronnie Dugger’s On Reagan the author is as unbending an ideologue as his subject is.
It’s a high-rise developer’s dream. Houston’s old guard wants to turn 34 acres of downtown warehouses into an island of classy shops and pricey condos. They thought they had it wired, until Kathy Whitmire was elected mayor.
Hurricane Alicia roared through Houston, but somehow it seemed much more real on TV than it did outside my hotel room window.
Jack Young was the eighties’ oil boom in the flesh. Unfortunately, he also personifies the aftermath of the bust.
Don’t give up! There’s still money to be made finding oil. Up in Graham the Creswells are striking it rich with the help of Jesus and, er, creekology.
The Great Energy Scam purports to uncover the collusion of the feds and the oil companies, but the real scandal is what the author overlooks. Yet another book on killer Ted Bundy sheds no light on his crimes. Roughneck is a rousing look at America’s most radical labor union.
In Corpus Christi’s schools, testing kids is as important as teaching them—which has greatly improved test scores but not the quality of public education.
The inside story of Boone Pickens’ adventures in the Wall Street merger game, featuring action, suspense, drama, a few laughs, and a special guest appearance by President Ronald Reagan.
When an Amarillo bishop decried the nearby H-bomb plant, he wooed the press, alienated the city, and picked on his parishioners.