Ted Cruz’s Excellent Adventure
Will a tea party darling be the state’s first Hispanic senator?
Jake Silverstein is the former editor in chief of Texas Monthly. He attended Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and also received degrees from Hollins University, in Roanoke, Virginia, and the Michener Center for Writers, at the University of Texas at Austin. In the late nineties, he worked as a reporter for the Big Bend Sentinel, a weekly newspaper in Marfa. In 2005 he became a contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine. His first book, Nothing Happened and Then It Did: A Chronicle in Fact and Fiction, was published in 2010 by W. W. Norton. His work has also appeared in the anthologies The Best American Travel Writing 2003 and Submersion Journalism (2008). He joined the staff of Texas Monthly as a senior editor in 2006. In 2008 he was named the fourth editor of the magazine. During his editorship, which ended in 2014, the magazine was nominated for eleven National Magazine Awards (the industry’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize) and won two, for general excellence and feature writing. Silverstein lives in New York and is the editor of the New York Times Magazine.
Will a tea party darling be the state’s first Hispanic senator?
As last year’s historic drought reminded us, Texas has always lived life by the drop, just a few dry years away from a serious crisis. With our population expected to nearly double over the next fifty years, this situation is about to become more, not less, challenging. This month we
The first serious coverage of water in TEXAS MONTHLY came just a couple months shy of our two-year anniversary, in a story by Greg Curtis entitled “Disaster, Part I. Lubbock is running out of water.” (A companion piece, “Disaster, Part II,” argued that Houston was sinking into
About a year ago, it was reported that Randall Dale Adams had died, bringing to a close one of the more tragic stories in recent Texas history. A construction worker from Ohio, Adams (pictured here, in 1989) was convicted and sentenced to die in 1977 for the murder of Dallas
Over the past two decades Texas has exonerated more than eighty wrongfully convicted prisoners. How does this happen? Can anything be done to stop it? We assembled a group of experts (a police chief, a state senator, a judge, a prosecutor, a district attorney, and an exoneree) to find out.
By Michael Hall and Jake Silverstein
After eleven contested elections dating back three decades, Rick Perry remains undefeated. Is he brilliant? Lucky? Ruthless? We asked the people who know best—his vanquished opponents.
Only a few years after arriving in Washington, John Cornyn has become the capital’s most powerful Texan. Can he lead the Republicans back to power in the Senate?
If it’s something you’d just as soon not think about, chances are Pamela Colloff has written about it for TEXAS MONTHLY. Here is a partial list of the subjects she’s covered since coming to work at the magazine thirteen years ago: murder, arson, abortion, heroin addiction, hate crimes, illegal immigration,
They may disagree on just about everything, but Rick Perry and Bill White have one thing in common: a Texas childhood.
By Mimi Swartz and Jake Silverstein
The cliché about any great tragedy is that it creates indelible markers in time and space: Had John F. Kennedy visited Dallas in 1963 without incident, few Americans would be able to recall much about where they were or what they were doing on November 22 of that year.
The old Kreuz Market was like a one-room chapel. The humble brick building off the courthouse square in Lockhart had turned out divine smoked meat since 1900. But just as churchgoers nowadays worship in larger halls, so too does the visitor to the new Kreuz Market, which opened in 1999
The founder of Whole Foods Market on conscious capitalism and eating healthy.
The only female university chancellor in Texas (and president of the University of Houston) on her quest for Tier One status.
Catching up with our leading unsentimentalist.
The state attorney general on Obamacare, secession, and challenges to Texas sovereignty.
Welcome to the new Texas Monthly.
Our forthcoming issue, on newsstands next week, tackles this subject, but we couldn’t wait any longer to share the cover of this special issue. Caution: Cute babies ahead.
It’s the Year of the Dragon, officially, but you could be forgiven for thinking that it’s the Year of the War on Women, or the War Over Women, or the War Among Women, or the War About Whether There Is a War on Women. The trouble began in January, when
Here is a partial list of the nice people Skip Hollandsworth has written about since he joined the magazine as a staff writer in 1989: Charles Albright, a serial killer in Dallas who removed his victims’ eyes; Marie Robards, a Fort Worth teenager who killed her father by poisoning
Two framed letters hang side by side in the main conference room at the offices of TEXAS MONTHLY, both of them written and signed by the magazine’s founder and former publisher, Mike Levy. The first is a note that prefaced the inaugural issue, in February 1973. The second is a
I hate flying. I don’t mean that I’m a legitimate, doctor-approved aerophobe who munches Xanax like candy and lunges for the barf bag at the first sign of turbulence. I just dislike the minor ordeal of air travel—the security lines, the required partial disrobing and unpacking, the “huddled masses”
For all the stories that we publish in TEXAS MONTHLY, there are always more that we don’t publish, usually because we run out of space and time. In a state that spans 261,232 square miles and contains 25,145,561 people, it’s a safe bet that the things we could cover
We only need 53 seconds to explain.
No one wants to give the governor a Bum Steer. No one wants to poke fun at the elected representative of 25 million Texans. In fact, when Rick Perry launched his presidential campaign four and a half months ago, we felt compelled to defend him (a little) from the slings
Back in February 1973, in the very first issue of this magazine, founding editor William Broyles wrote, by way of introduction, “If our readers have ever finished the daily paper or the six o’clock news and felt there was more than what they were told, then they know why we
Come on in, and make yourself at home.
Later this month, one of the great long-standing traditions in college athletics—the annual Thanksgiving game between the University of Texas and Texas A&M—will come to an end. The rivalry between these two schools has lasted so long, and fostered such ferocious passion on both sides, that most people probably
On Sunday, some 3,000 hungry carnivores will descend on the Terrace at the Long Center in Austin to devour a truly massive spread of meat at the Texas Monthly BBQ Festival. We’ll have 22 pitmasters from across the state serving up brisket, ribs, and sausage as festival-goers enjoy live
Some writers are journeymen, always on the road. Others work and rework the same ground, eventually becoming identified with the places they inhabit. In this second category you often find journalists and novelists who take their inspiration from huge and fascinating cities, urban ecosystems with enough tragedy, comedy, and
The roots of Rick Perry’s frontier style.
You’re probably well aware that earlier this summer the television show Friday Night Lights came to an end. The network season finale, in mid-July, triggered a wave of epitaphs from critics and slews of tearful “texasforever”-hashtagged tweets from fans, more reminders of the powerful chord that the scrappy football drama
We interrupt your regular blogger to bring you a special message from the editor: So it’s official. As of today, at 1:30 pm EST, Governor Perry is finally a formal candidate for president (though we’ve been convinced he had eyes on the job as far back as
One of the best—and the hardest—parts of being a magazine editor is deciding what goes on the cover every month. There is nothing else quite like that little rectangle of real estate. Book jackets and album covers are quieter, movie posters are less integral to the product, billboards are more
There’s an old joke that goes like this: A girl is out milking the family cow one morning when a stranger rolls up and asks if her parents are at home. The girl yells out, “Mama, there’s a man here to see you!” Her mother peers out the door and,
Only a few years ago, the word was understood (if it was used at all) to mean chicken wings or jalapeño poppers or nachos. That time is gone forever. As even the proudest Luddite now knows, an “app” is something you download onto your handheld device or tablet, a helpful
The U.S. Constitution says nothing about public education, but all the state constitutions have clauses addressing it, and reading through them is a mildly inspiring way to spend half an hour. Arkansas: “Intelligence and virtue being the safeguards of liberty and the bulwark of a free and good government, the
With public education facing an estimated $7 billion in cuts, the question on everyone’s mind is, Are Texas schools doomed? So we assembled a group of dinner guests (a superintendent, advocates on both sides, an education union rep, and the commissioner of the Texas Education Agency) to find out. Check,
By Nate Blakeslee and Jake Silverstein
The first person I think of when it comes to cooking like a Texan is Enrique Madrid. You probably have someone you think of, your father, perhaps, or your grandmother. I think of Enrique, a historian, archaeologist, cook, defender of the borderlands, author, and lecturer whose family has been living
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
This issue went to press four days before the start of the most important legislative session of our lifetime, when lawmakers face, in addition to the testy, high-stakes business of redistricting and the supercharged debate over immigration and voter ID, an epic fiscal crisis: a budget shortfall of up to
A wise man once said, “Beware of football Bum Steers.” Baseball is fine, and so is basketball, since both of those seasons will have wrapped up by the time the January issue goes to press. But football is a different story. Just when you think a player or a coach
“Take the grips up to the attic.” That was Harry Truman’s response to a reporter who asked him, as he arrived back home in Independence, Missouri, after leaving the White House, what he intended to do first (“grips,” for all you kids out there, used to be a common synonym
We invited four lawmakers who disagree vehemently on the subject and a couple of experts to keep things friendly. Pull up a chair for a round of table talk you won’t soon forget.
The job of most editors, myself included, is to delight, entertain, surprise, and inform their readers. The majority of the time, when it comes to choosing a cover story, we try to keep the emphasis on the first three, since the other job of most editors, myself included, is to
On October 27, 1900, an Austrian-born mining engineer named Anthony F. Lucas spudded in an oil well on a hill near Beaumont. He’d drilled a previous well in the vicinity to a depth of 575 feet before running out of money and giving up, but this time he’d secured financing
He’s been here from the very beginning. In February 1973 readers of the first issue of a brand-new magazine called TEXAS MONTHLY were treated to, among other stories, a strange but fascinating piece by a strange but fascinating writer named Gary Cartwright. Gary was already familiar to many Texans
Before Rick Perry was fighting for the governorship of the second-largest state in the country, he was just a kid from Paint Creek.
This is our second “Where I’m From” special issue, in which the entire magazine, front to back, is given over to stories about growing up in Texas. Last time, most of the essays were by staff writers. This time we turned to some of our favorite authors, folks like
I’ve been thinking about a spot on the Brazos about a day and half below the dam at Possum Kingdom Reservoir, where a long, humped island narrows to a spit of sand. A couple of years ago I found myself camped there with three friends. We’d been paddling all
This past year marked an important, though largely unnoticed, milestone for fans of Selena Quintanilla Perez, the hugely popular Tejano singer who died at 23 on March 31, 1995: She has now lived in our memories for longer than she performed professionally. She was 9 years old when she started