Roadhouse Warrior
Ely may have a new album, but his best performances have always been live, in person.
Ely may have a new album, but his best performances have always been live, in person.
Memories of growing up (and growing up restless) in working-class Oak Cliff.
Once, the State of Texas was going to put Kenneth McDuff to death as payment for his crimes. Instead, it set him free to murder again.
Two prominent families, one soapy feud. What could be better for a summer miniseries?
Is Ann Richards planning a historic move from the statehouse to the White House?
For six years, my landlord and his wife were the perfect neighbors. Then he was accused of murdering her—and suddenly I didn’t know what to believe.
Rodeo, rodeo, wherefore art thou rodeo? Mary Ellen Mark went to small towns all over Texas to find out.
Sure, they were gangsters, but they were our gangsters.
Boxing caught its second wind when George Foreman went the distance with the champ, Evander Holyfield.
To understand Wanda Holloway’s dark and desperate story, you have to start with where she came from.
When the IRS seized all that Willie Nelson had, it was a case of the man who can’t say no meeting the men who won’t take no for an answer.
“Guys like me like Iraq,” says Houston oilman Oscar Wyatt. “That’s the way the real world works, baby.”
Searching for tourist courts, fillin’ stations, and other relics of a Texas that is no more.
A Dublin bottler is the only one in Texas who’s still sweet on traditional Dr. Pepper.
The bands play on and on and on in Austin.
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.
Reflections and recollections of life among the shadows of the Piney Woods.
She was a hooker. He was a race car driver. They fell in love. She moved in. He put on his three-piece suit and went to work. She was always on call. They fought. She moved out. Then she found out that his real job was bank jobs.
Two nice guys with financial troubles thought they found the perfect solution to the bust. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
The disappearance of a University of Texas student in Matamoros led police to the discovery of a drug-dealing cult whose rituals were not only unholy but unthinkable.
They were the classic Texas Indians—fierce, majestic, and free. Today’s Comanches find their lives defined by legends and bitter truths.
How Madalyn Murray O’Hair became the supreme being of the American atheist movement.
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.
The allure of Galveston Bay is not natural beauty but the determination of nature to survive ugliness.
In the town George Parr once dominated, a nineteen-year-old mother was gang-raped by her neighbors. In the aftermath of the crime, the old horrors of San Diego have surfaced anew.
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.
A tiger, a zoo, a terrifying death.
As the president of Texas’ largest private grocery chain, Charles Butt learned that in order to be nice to his customers he had to be tough on his competitors. And vice versa.
Judges take his money. Juries buy his bull. And when clients like Pennzoil need a tiger in their tank, they hire Joe Jamail.
The ghosts of bowl games past recall an era when cotton and the Cotton Bowl were king in Texas.
Growing up, I took the Panhandle’s plain nature for granted. Only after years away and a sentimental journey home did I take it to heart.
He had a wife and a girlfriend. His ambition was unchecked. He tried to commit suicide. But when I came face to face with the minister of my boyhood church, the sin we talked about was murder.
Never say Kant, Socrates it to ’em, and other collected wisdom from Texas’ Friday-night philosophers.
The Menil Collection has received so much attention that its opening this month may seem anticlimactic. The only unknown is what the director plans to do with it all.
When Randall Adams was sentenced to death ten years ago, the Dallas community thought a cop killing had been put to rest. But it hasn’t.
For eight years, I had a love affair with Houston. When the good times ended, we drifted apart. But while it lasted, we had the time of our lives.
He was the definitive Davy Crockett, and with good reason.
In a ninety-minute reign of terror, gunshots rang out that still echo in the history of Texas.
Robert Sakowitz set out to be a retail Renaissance man. Like his hero Leonardo da Vinci, he was going to do everything. And he did—including something he never imagined: fail.
The real Texas technology picture is much more intricate than either the mad hype of two years ago or the dire headlines of today make it out to be.
Darrell Royal’s supremely simple invention took Texas teams to the top and kept them there.
An early castaway described Padre Island as “a wretched, barren sandbank.” It’s better known today as the Gold Coast of Texas, but its identity is still rooted in wildness and age-old solitude.
“When the cowboys on the 06 ranch talked about losing a way of life, they often pointed to their neighbor, Clayton Williams, as an example of what they meant. He was a millionaire and an oilman, and he represented everything they hated.”
These fourteen Texas sheriffs are everything you thought a sheriff ought to be. But look quick; the old-time county lawman is riding off into the sunset.
The death of Uncle Henry saddened my whole far-flung family, but the gathering at his funeral was an occasion for telling stories and recalling the joys of a small-town upbringing.
Texas’ morning glory by thirteen photographers.
Urban refugees fleeing high-tech Dallas have created ersatz rural communities in the nearby countryside. This isolated, pastoral life sometimes erupts into adultery and murder.
A great man was dead and an outraged world desperately wanted someplace to lay blame. It chose Dallas and changed the city forever.
When armadillos weighed three tons and the long horns were on dinosaurs.