Texas
Story Stream
Unpleasant Gore-ography February 25, 2025
In 1968, The New York Times dismissed Night of the Living Dead as a revolting little item cobbled together by “some people in Pittsburgh.” The review was myopic; the film was visionary. George A. Romero’s low-budget account of everyday Americans unde...
Texas’s Barbecue Schism February 25, 2025
Seventeen years ago, on assignment for The New Yorker, Calvin Trillin travelled through central Texas on a barbecue-themed road trip. He was with editors from Texas Monthly, which had just published its top fifty barbecue joints in the state, a list ...
Desperado Dadaism February 18, 2025
Lubbock, Texas is almost exactly five hours from Dallas, Albuquerque, Oklahoma City, and El Paso. It’s home to Texas Tech University, the National Cowboy Symposium, and frequent dust storms and tornadoes. In 1951, the still-unexplained “Lubbock Light...
Collectivism in the C-Suite February 06, 2025
On January 10, Federal Judge Reed O’Connor, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, ruled that American Airlines had violated both federal law and its fiduciary duty of loyalty to its employees by contracting with BlackRock to ...
The Carpetbagger Who Saw Texas’s Future December 11, 2024
When Edna Ferber’s Giant was published in 1952, Texans were not pleased. Ferber’s sweeping novel about cattle, oil, and the winds of change brought a reform-minded Virginia woman, Leslie Benedict, to a Texas ranch, where she has the temerity to sugge...
The Californication of Texas August 12, 2024
When I first moved to Texas in 2006, I spent several months living with my in-laws in Georgetown, a quiet town of about 46,000 people located 30 miles north of Austin. There was a giant house in their neighbourhood that looked different from all the ...
Why Readers Love — And Love to Hate — Colleen Hoover August 09, 2024
This weekend, one of the most popular books of the decade is making its way to the big screen. Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us, a romantic tearjerker about breaking the cycle of abuse that became a social media sensation after it was published in 20...
Driving While Female August 01, 2024
I’ve exceeded the speed limit on Texas interstates, spun around after taking a turn too fast, and once changed my outfit while driving. I learned to drive in a 1971 three-on-the-tree Chevy pick-up and my daily driver is a six-speed, turbo-charged Jap...
My First Year in Texas April 03, 2024
I’m reflecting on the good, the bad and the surprising of my first year in Texas. I took a huge risk moving my business and my family away from California. How has it gone?I had a tough entry into my new life. Moving is insanely stressful. So much so...
Fables of the Lone Star Liberal March 29, 2024
A distinguished writer sits in an East Texas diner, chatting with the director Richard Linklater: They shake hands with locals and talk about Linklater’s family, the prison system, and the curious “oppositional personality” of radicals. Now, the writ...
Beyoncé’s Country Roots March 27, 2024
If you somehow haven’t heard: Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, her eighth studio album and the much-anticipated sequel to Renaissance, drops on Friday. Its lead single “Texas Hold ‘Em” made history when it debuted at the top of the country charts last month....
Steve Austin Turned “Texas Tough” Into Megacelebrity March 26, 2024
The Texas Rattlesnake. The Bionic Redneck. The Bottom Line. Steve Austin has been known by many names, but two words rise above them all to define this true-blue Texan phenomenon: Stone Cold....
How Jesse Plemons Came to Star in Everything March 25, 2024
When Jesse Plemons goes quiet—and here on the front porch of his childhood home, thirty minutes east of Waco, Jesse Plemons has just gone quiet—you don’t know if you’re at the end of something or the beginning. Nobody suggests so much by saying so li...
The Cult of Townes Van Zandt March 15, 2024
On 20 September 1977 Townes Van Zandt played the first of two nights at the Lone Star Cafe, then New York City’s premier country music venue. By this point the Texas-born musician had recorded six albums, made over the course of just four years. The ...
