Texas History
January 20, 2013
Texas Primer: Barbed Wire
It spelled the end of the open range and the beginning of modern Texas.
Texas History
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Politics & Policy
January 20, 2013
Go Ask Alice
Fifty years ago LBJ won—some say stole—a U.S. Senate runoff. What happened to the South Texas ballot box that saved his career?
Texas History
January 20, 2013
“Oh, My God! It’s Our Children!”
On March 18, 1937, the residents of New London, southeast of Tyler, endured the worst small-town tragedy in U.S. history: an explosion at the combined junior-senior high school that killed some three hundred students and teachers.
Sports
January 20, 2013
Texas Primer: The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders
How much are the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders paid per game?
News & Politics
January 20, 2013
Abraham Zapruder
How much did Life pay Abraham Zapruder for the rights to his assassination film?
Texas History
January 20, 2013
The Great Terquasquicentennial Road Trip
Some people call it a quartoseptcentennial, or a septaquintaquinquecentennial (seriously), but you’d better save your breath. You’ll need it on this wide-ranging 6,000-mile voyage commemorating Texas’s 175th birthday. It starts in Glen Rose, ends in Austin, and stops along the way at 175 places that tell the story of the
Texas History
January 20, 2013
Time Will Tell
I saw my first historical marker as a Cub Scout in Pack 291. Nearly thirty years later, I’m still hooked on the story of Texas.
Music
January 20, 2013
The Slow Life and Fast Death of DJ Screw
Until he overdosed in November, he was one of the most influential cultural figures in Texas, the master of a scene fueled by drugs and his own brilliant, eccentric music.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
Key Moments in Mexican Food History
From 3500 BC, when indigenous peoples in Mexico and Central America began cultivating chiles, to 2010, when the Culinary Institute of America opened an expanded campus in San Antonio.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
Mance Lipscomb
What was so special about Mance Lipscomb’s dentures?
Music
January 20, 2013
Birthplaces of the Blues
Want to see the Texas of Leadbelly, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mance Lipscomb, and other pioneering musicians of the twentieth century? Your trip through time begins near Washington-on-the-Brazos.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
No Retreat! No Surrender!
Besieged on all sides, will the Daughters of the Republic of Texas finally lose control of the Alamo? Not if they can help it.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
You Aren’t Here
The very spot where William Barrett Travis wrote his famous “victory or death” letter is a Ripley’s Haunted Adventures. And other ways gross commercialization has desecrated the Alamo’s sacred battleground site.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
Lyndon Johnson on the Record
Working on his memoir one day in 1969, LBJ spoke more frankly into a tape recorder about the Kennedys, Vietnam, and other subjects than he ever had before. The transcript of that tape has never been published—until now. Michael Beschloss explains its historical significance.
News & Politics
January 20, 2013
The Man Who Saved LBJ
Who deserves credit for Lyndon Johnson's newly burnished reputation? Harry Middleton, the director of the LBJ presidential library, who made hours and hours of White House audiotapes public—and in doing so, remade history.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
A River Runs Through It
At the port of entry in El Paso, I always tell the agents, “American,” but what I really want to say is “fronterizo”—I’m from both sides.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
City of Dreams
Searching for the legendary past—and the cosmic future—in my old river city, San Antonio de Béjar.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
Styles and Styles of Texas
The thirty Texans with the most iconic, unforgettable, eye-popping looks, from Davy Crockett to Beyoncé.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
The Alamo Should Never Have Happened
Yes, we should remember the battle at the center of the Texas Revolution. But we should forget everything we think we know about it.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
The Aggie Bonfire Tragedy
What’s so important about a stack of wood? Every Aggie knows that the answer is tradition—which is why, after a catastrophe that took the lives of twelve young men and women, the decision of whether to continue, change, or call a halt to the bonfire looms so large at Texas
Texas History
January 20, 2013
O Sister, Where Art Thou?
History makes no mention of what was one of the most popular all-female country acts ever. Yet the story of the Goree Girls—inmates who banded together in the forties at Texas’ sole penitentiary for women—is worth a listen.
Books
January 20, 2013
Nice Guys Finish Last
A pivotal loss in the 1970 Senate race shaped George Bush’s future. An excerpt from a new book on the 1988 presidential campaign.
News & Politics
January 20, 2013
25 Stories About Bob Bullock
He’s gone but not forgotten—particularly now, when leadership is in such short supply. Friends and colleagues recall why the late lieutenant governor was one of a kind.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
A Stately House: A Photographic Portrait
Even on her one-hundredth birthday, the Texas Capitol looks good in places other building don’t even have places.
Politics & Policy
January 20, 2013
North Toward Dome
The best way to visit the Capitol, the state’s grandest public building, is to take the 45-minute guided tour. But there is much more to see if you know what to look for, and I’m going to tell you precisely that.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
Remains of the Day
The Texas State Cemetery, home to the final resting places of the celebrated and the notorious, is a walk through time, revealing all that is great, courageous, tragic, pompous, and absurd about Texas.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
Grande Dame of the Gulf
She may be past her prime, but Galveston still clings to her aristocratic heritage and her precarious place on the sand.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
Making Up Is Hard to Do
How the cosmetically challenged among us manage to save face.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
The Way We Wore
From buckskin to polyester, a look at 166 years of Texas fashion that doesn’t skirt the issues.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
“Beldades” of the Ball
Every February, on the weekend of Presidents’ Day, the daughters of Laredo’s most prominent families are presented to society in dresses that cost $20,000 or more at a colonial pageant that is the party of the year.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
Cemeteries
Simple wooden crosses in Terlingua, carefully delineated stonework in Jefferson: Five great graveyards that run the gamut.
Texas History
January 20, 2013
Squares
A masterpiece of courthouse architecture in Waxahachie, a handsome jail of native stone in Marfa: Significant structures line the streets of five terrific town centers.
Texas History
December 1, 2012
11/22/2013
In one year the eyes of the world will turn to Dallas's Dealey Plaza for the fiftieth anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Is the city ready?
Texas History
October 31, 2012
Reign of Thought
Contrary to our self-mythology, ideas—and the people who wrote them down—have always been central to Texas history.
Texas History
October 31, 2012
My Name Is Cásares
And the story of how I started spelling it that way (with the accent) begins with a kidnapping.
Texas History
October 31, 2012
Drain of Thought
Why are there so few Texan philosophers?
Texas History
August 15, 2012
The Children of Texas
I was never certain how to explain the importance of the state to my three daughters. Now that I have two grandsons—named Mason and Travis, no less—I’ve realized something that I should have known all along.
Texas History
July 2, 2012
Galveston Moves One Step Closer to Embracing Jack Johnson
A group of Galvestonians work to open Jack Johnson Park, the city's latest effort to reclaim its most famous son since turning its back on him a century ago.
Texas History
April 1, 2012
The True Meaning of the Tejano Monument
A $2 million bronze monument honoring Tejanos was unveiled at the Capitol last week. Here's why it's historically significant to all Texans.
Politics & Policy
March 1, 2012
Power Trio
In this excerpt from Indomitable Will: LBJ in the Presidency, letters, interviews, and historic documents offer a revealing glimpse into the stormy relationship between Lyndon Johnson and the Kennedys.
Texas History
February 1, 2012
ESPN Writer: LBJ Was Not Much of a College Football Recruiter
On National Signing Day, Ivan Maisel recalls LBJ's failed attempt to get Joe Washington to play for Darrell Royal at the University of Texas.
Texas History
August 1, 2011
The Skirmish Will Be Followed by a Ladies’ Tea
The Civil War may be 150 years old, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still stir up a fuss (Confederate license plate, anyone?). Just ask one of the hundreds of very accurately uniformed reenactors who descend on Jefferson every year to die for the cause.
Feature
May 31, 2011
Falling Comet
In 1955 Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” transformed the sound of popular music and made him an international star. Twenty-five years later he was forgotten, desperate, and dying in Harlingen. How did one of the fathers of rock and roll land so far outside the spotlight?
Texas History
March 1, 2011
Texas, My Texas
Read a Q&A with Brian D. Sweany.
Texas History
March 1, 2011
Past Present
Big moments call for big efforts. This year marks the 175th anniversary of the victory of Sam Houston’s ragtag band of volunteers over the Mexican army, which led to the creation of the sovereign Republic of Texas. In the almost two centuries since then, much has changed. Texas is now
News & Politics
December 1, 2010
Imaginary Friends
Brownsville’s first federal judge was a legendary figure in my house. So legendary that I never believed my father when he said he knew the man.
Texas History
August 31, 2010
The History of Texas (According to Wikipedia)
How to learn the history of Texas in five minutes or less.
Texas History
April 30, 2010
Last Days of the Comanches
In an exclusive excerpt from his new book, Empire of the Summer Moon, special correspondent S. C. Gwynne re-creates in thrilling detail the bloody 1871 battle that marked the beginning of the end for the most fearsome tribe to ever ride the plains and its mysterious, magnificent chief, Quanah Parker.
Texas History
August 31, 2009
Revolutionary Kind
Daniel Miller, the president of the Texas Nationalist Movement, is a proud secessionist. And the tea parties were just the beginning for this true believer.
Texas History
July 20, 2009
Walking on the Moon
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made history as the first humans to set foot on the surface of the moon. Forty years later, the researchers, astronauts, engineers, scientists, and NASA officials who made the voyage possible remember the day the Eagle landed.