Longform
Featured
Is Houston’s Jonny Rhodes the Most Subversive Chef in the Country?
Anybody ever read a slave narrative by Frederick Douglass before?” asked Jonny Rhodes, the 29-year-old chef and owner of the Houston restaurant Indigo. Thirteen diners—a full house—were about to begin the final course of the evening, a preserved candied yam semifreddo concoction Rhodes had titled “Descendants of Igbo.” A few people exchanged glances. “Any takers?” Rhodes prodded. There were none. “Definitely check that book out!” the chef exclaimed. Rhodes was… Read Story
Latest in Longreads
See All
He was a high school band director and the cornerstone of a lively music scene in southeast Texas—and then a Saturday night gig exposed him to the coronavirus.
But for heaven’s sake, the best-selling author, unapologetic cusser, and fifth-generation Texan would rather not be called that.
First came the sound of someone running hard on the breezeway outside, then a banging on the apartment door. Irene Vera opened it to see her neighbor, twenty-year-old Rosa Jimenez, holding a little boy who lay limp in her arms. “Help me! Help me!” Jimenez cried hysterically in Spanish. The…
In 1978, an eighth grader killed his teacher. After 20 months in a psychiatric facility, he was freed. His classmates still wonder: What really happened?
He was a notorious deal maker known for bringing priceless pieces of Texas history back to the state. He was also a suspected forger and arsonist. Thirty years ago, he was found dead in the Colorado River near Austin, and to this day a question remains: Could John Holmes Jenkins have masterminded his own death?
Rhodes was an unproven 27-year-old chef when he launched Indigo, a tiny restaurant with a radical concept in a low-income Houston neighborhood. Now it's one of the hottest kitchens in the country.
The incredible true story of two brothers raised on the hardscrabble country music of rural West Texas who dropped out, tuned in, found God, and helped launch the seventies soft-rock revolution.
Settle in for a by-no-means comprehensive list of some of the most popular stories in our pages this year.
When her former student was found wandering the streets a decade after she’d last seen him, Michell Girard immediately agreed to take him in. Then she decided to do far more, including give him the Christmas he’d never had.
Brenda thought she and Ricky would be together forever, until he left her. Kendra thought she and Ricky would be together forever. Then Brenda took matters into her own hands. Inside the case of jealousy, spying, and murder that shook Uptown Dallas.
Treatments for chronic Lyme disease are controversial and expensive. As a last resort, some patients are pursuing this unproven and painful alternative.
From the archives
For almost forty years, Kerry Max Cook did everything to clear his name after being convicted of a horrifying murder in Tyler. So when he was finally exonerated, why did he ask for his conviction back?
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.
A violent tackle in a high school football game paralyzed John McClamrock for life. His mother made sure it was a life worth living.
Forty-five years after Betty Williams was shot to death by the handsome football player she had been secretly seeing, her murder haunts her Odessa high school—literally.
Buddy Holly. Waylon Jennings. Carolyn Hester. The Hancocks. The Flatlanders. An oral history of the state's most storied music scene.
More than a year after his death, he’s still being remembered as the best Texas songwriter of his time. This month’s star-studded Austin City Limits tribute shows why.
Miranda Lambert has a lot to be happy about—she’s recently married, with a brand-new album and a string of hits that has made her the toast of Nashville. So why is she so twangry?
At 11:48 a.m. on August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman began firing his rifle from the top of the University of Texas Tower at anyone and everyone in his sights. At 1:24 p.m., he was gunned down himself. The lives of the people who witnessed the sniper’s spree firsthand would never be the same again.
It was part musical, part dance movie, and part love story, and in June 1980 it unleashed an unprecedented fervor for country music, Western wear, and, yes, mechanical bulls. More than three decades later, the film’s stars (including John Travolta, Debra Winger, Mickey Gilley, and Johnny Lee) and many Gilley’s regulars recall the movie that made America fall in love with Texas.
Five Rio Grande Valley–based reporters talk about covering the drug war in Mexico over the past decade.
When the 85-year-old matriarch of a prominent pecan-farming clan in San Saba was murdered, her death shook the town—and exposed how obsession and greed can fell a family from within.
In 1982 three teenagers were killed near the shores of Lake Waco in a seemingly inexplicable crime. More than three decades later, the tragic and disturbing case still casts a long, dark shadow.
They were some of the toughest narcs on the border, known for busting smugglers, staging raids, seizing cartel cocaine—and being dirty.
The National Magazine Award–winning story about Michael Morton, a man who came home from work one day in 1986 to find that his wife had been brutally murdered. What happened next was one of the most profound miscarriages of justice in Texas history.
Michael Morton spent 25 years wrongfully imprisoned for the brutal murder of his wife. How did it happen? And who is to blame?
Four seldom visited areas of Texas prove to be proudly beautiful and almost inaccessible.
Leroy’s Revenge Otis Crater was late for the fanciers’ organizational meeting at the Cherokee Lounge for good reason. He had just stabbed a U-Totem attendant following a discussion of the economic impact of a five-cent price increase on a six-pack of beer. Crater kicked open the lounge door and bounced…
Two self-styled Texas soldiers of fortune engineered one of the more bizarre jailbreaks in history. Here’s how it happened.
