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The World’s Greatest Poker Player

Johnny Chan became a champion through nerve and dedication—and every now and then a few good hands.

Move Over, Mom

The ideal caretaker for your children is a warm, nurturing person who brings order to your chaotic life—and drives you up the wall.

It Doesn’t Compute

Why NASA uses old-fashioned computers; Exxon points the finger at the feds over the oil spill cleanup; Jim Wright’s real crime.

Genuine Fakes

Rewriting history, bugging the big guys, acknowledging a threat.

Blast from the Past

Houston mayoral candidate Fred Hofheinz has an incumbent and a rumor to defeat; Phil DeVries has a singing caterpillar to find; Zavala County must make a private prison pay its way; and Lori Johns is out to prove she’s the best woman on the drag strip.

Texas Primer: The Runaway Scrape

In early 1836, after the fall of the Alamo, a small episode in Texas history revealed an aspect of our character we’d just as soon forget.

A Terminal Case

Representative Mike McKinney, the only doctor in the House, is battling for legislation to keep country hospitals alive despite a poor prognosis.

Poisoned With Love

They were elderly people, flattered by the attention of a nice young man. But sometimes it’s a mistake to depend on the kindness of strangers.

My Favorite Place

What do the city of Lubbock, a defunct restaurant, and a submerged neighborhood have in common? They’re all places in somebody’s heart.

Masa Marketing

In most Texas cities, tortilla making is an endangered family business; in Austin, it’s a thriving family rivalry.

Doing the Legislature a favor.

Bad salaries make good politicians.

Poisoned by Their Own Home

When the St. Johns returned to their house after having it sprayed for bugs, they discovered why those friendly pest-control people are called exterminators.

Living With the Bomb

As a teenager, I dreamed of the ultimate hot rod. Then I woke up to find I owned the ugliest car in the world.

Animal House

The Aggies’ vet school is going to the dogs; picture-perfect rivalry in the governor’s race; Lloyd Bentsen wants more money from Texas; New York takeover toughs establish an outpost in Houston.

Facing Forward, Facing Back

The Comanches in the present; the skinheads in Dallas, the mess in Texas; the crisis in the prisons.

Red Sails in the Sunbelt

Windsurfers add sparkle to Corpus Christi Bay; the Johnson family says a poignant farewell to one of its own; the golden arches attain alpine heights—but come crashing down in Houston.

Beyond the Blues

The unlikely twosome of eccentric rocker Doug Sahm and blues champion Clifford Antone has rescued from obscurity a distinctively rhythmic, indisputably raunchy regional sound.

Don’t Call Him Junior

George W. Bush wants to be governor of Texas. He says he’s not following in his father’s footsteps, but his name, his career, and his ideas about politics seem an awful lot like Dad’s.

Side By Side

Among the harsh mountains of Chihuahua, Mennonite immigrants and Tarahumara Indians maintain their ancient ways.

Eat Sweet

Peanut patties are red, raspas are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are pralines, pecan pie, kolaches, and seven other great Texas desserts.

Paint and pluck.

A Developing Art

The current show at Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts brings 150 years of photography into sharp focus.

Abortion Street

Sixteen years after Roe v. Wade, all the bitterness and horror of the abortion fight can be found at a single site in Dallas.

Songs of Innocence

In Joe Scruggs’s music Everymom evicts under-the-bed monsters, Everykid remembers on Monday morning the fifteen things he needs for school that day, and Everybody delights in Scruggs’s corny but sensitive portrayal of childhood.

Search and Destroy

An employee’s vandalism by computer might have gone unpunished but for a rookie prosecutor out to test a new law.

Buddy Maedgen Is Bugged!

The saga of a man and his helpful insects illustrates the age-old battle between visionaries and bureaucrats.

Forgery, Texas Style

As Texans’ pride of place rose with the price of oil, collectors scrambled for the few documents of the Texas Revolution. Suddenly there seemed to be plenty to go around. But no one thought to ask why.

The Bush League

In George Bush’s Cabinet, Texans are crawling out of the woodwork. Read about their pasts, their pets, their secret passions.

The Second Coming

Twenty-five years ago, Texans hoped LBJ would lead them into the promised land. They have the same hopes for the new president, but George Bush is making no promises.

Remembering the Sabbath

In the fifties a Baptist minister’s daughters were expected to be models of piety—clean, demure, virginal, and impervious to the lure of secular pleasures like makeup and TV.

State Secrets

Food for thought: agriculture commissioner Jim Hightower may get plowed under; Coastal tries to cut the golden parachute; calling all cars in El Paso.

The Boys of Spring

You probably think that the main reason to go to the Texas Rangers’ Florida training camp is to watch baseball. You’re probably wrong.

Roar of the Crowd

Getting bummed out on 1988; separating church and state; facing difficult decisions.

Captain Homeless

Austin’s homeless find a home sweet home on the lake; Fort Worth’s impresario of white gospel puts on a no-sweat show; Dallas’ Comet crashes; and Houston’s Orange Show marks a decade of—well, orange.

A Brush With Life

A gallery of nine Texans and their other selves.

Back In the Saddle Again

Twenty-five years ago, Texans hoped LBJ would lead them into the promised land. They have the same hopes for the new president, but George H. W. Bush is making no promises.

The Bridge That Went Away.

Beyond Cisneros.

Days in the Country, Nights on the Town

New fiction takes the reader on forays into Louisiana swamps, excursions into smoke-filled Austin honky-tonks, and down life’s highway with a lady trucker

The Wooing of Chairman Wang

The decision by a Chinese plastics company to build a billion-dollar plant in Texas proves that economic development works—but it comes at a high price.

No TASP, No Play

A competency test for colleges; gauging the governor’s race; hard times at Hermann Hospital; what on earth was George Bush thinking about?

Roar of the Crowd

Never giving in; making it big; reclaiming a neighborhood.

This is Now

Looking forward to Jerry Jeff Walker’s second Luckenbach, looking into a new way to settle feuds, and looking back over the career of Texas’ most prolific unknown author.

Blithe Spirit

It took a bit of coaxing, but when R. T. Williams finally sat down at the piano again, the Grey Ghost came back to life.

Jailhouse Hock

Bill Clements’ ambitious—and expensive—prison-expansion plan is only a tiny first step toward escaping the overcrowding problem.

Chip Ahoy

A new gambling-cruise-ship enterprise out of Port Isabel makes it possible to spend an evening in a casino while going nowhere in the Gulf.

A Dirty, Rotten Mess

Every day each of us contributes five pounds to the growing mountain of garbage. Now the mountain looks like a volcano that’s threatening to erupt.

Art for Heart’s Sake

A great big valentine from 95 artists to a San Antonio hospital’s transplant program.

The Lost Tribe

They were the classic Texas Indians—fierce, majestic, and free. Today’s Comanches find their lives defined by legends and bitter truths.

Spot Market

Ranchers hate bobcats. Trappers love their pelts. Both parties have found that there’s more than one reason to skin a cat.

Behind the Lines

Three years and $400,000 later.