Plus: the pleasures of pickling, a feminist take on the Mexican Revolution, and a Georgetown jeweler.
Texas history
With chatter about Texas leaving the union on the rise, two new books remind us what it was like the last time we tried to go it alone.
George McJunkin found a prehistoric bison skeleton that upended theories about human existence in the Americas.
The version of Texas history taught in school is often anglicized and sanitized. We examine how one textbook falls short.
The version of Texas history taught in school is often anglicized and sanitized. We examine how one textbook falls short.
The Southwest—not California—was the birthplace of the U.S. wine industry; the Panhandle—not the Hill Country—is where Texas grapes grow best; and other little-known facts.
The version of Texas history I learned in school was woefully incomplete. And, according to two historians, this 2016 textbook is, too.
From its origins airing the banter of bored firefighters to its robust classical programming today, Dallas’s WRR-FM has filled an unusual niche on the airwaves for nearly a century.
Kevin Willmott’s unsettling film revisits the Houston riot of 1917, in which an all-Black Army unit mutinied after enduring months of harassment.
Play with clay and learn about an important figure from Texas history.
After the Civil War, a group of politicians fought—and failed—to empower everyday Texans. But we can see their influence in the New Deal, the Great Society, Donald Trump, and Bernie Sanders.
Coleman’s extraordinary life and career deserves to be celebrated in the canon of U.S. history.
’The Immortal Alamo’ says much about the silent film era, and how San Antonio could have been Hollywood.
The Austin author on his fascination with H.L. Hunt, his inability to hate Santa Anna, and how he met the challenges of writing a history of Texas for the twenty-first century.
Stephen Harrigan’s ’Big Wonderful Thing’ sweeps away decades of mythmaking. Are we ready to remember the Alamo—and the Texas Rangers and the Civil War—differently?
In the early twentieth century, long-simmering tensions in South Texas erupted into a grim and brutal race war.
After breaking away from Mexico, the combative Republic of Texas took its fight against Native Americans to the heart of Comanchería, led by a group of militiamen who called themselves Rangers.
As the Civil War violently divided the nation, Texan turned against Texan.
For years, the great folklorist convinced many scholars and activists that the vaunted “Texas Man of Letters” was an anti-Mexican racist. Maybe it’s time to reconsider that judgment—as Paredes himself eventually did.
While a new generation of scholars is rewriting our history, supporters of the traditional narratives are fighting to keep their grip on the public imagination.
Dream of building your own medieval fortress? You aren’t alone.
A keepsake taken from a fallen warrior’s body 135 years ago hasn’t lost its power.
It’s the nation’s biggest spread within the confines of a single fence—more than eight hundred square miles extending across six counties. So it’s fitting that the family feud over its future is big too. And mythic.
