Gary Bradley, a hot young land speculator in Austin, was in the middle of a $50 million deal when he ran into an outraged environmental movement and a lobbyist with some powerful clients. The fight was on.
Behind the scenes at regional headquarters—a sometime part-timer tells all.
Hundreds of new computer companies have made Texas the likely successor to California’s Silicon Valley, and it all started with two firms in Dallas.
When Bames-Connally Investments announced plans to build apartments in a South Austin neighborhood, the residents banded together to try to stop them. They won the battle but lost the war.
Austin’s Roy Spence parlayed his success in Mark White’s campaign into a job selling Walter Mondale to the American people.
When armadillos weighed three tons and the long horns were on dinosaurs.
Or, my life as a Texas gardener.
The new governor’s first hundred days were great theater, but now come taxes.
Texas' glass artists are leading a revolution in an ancient craft.
Does Texas’ greatest college coach miss football? Nope.
The university at one hundred; how good is it, really?
Multiple-choice question: UT’s Tom Philpott is (a) the best professor on campus, a selfless reformer, and the victim of an assassination attempt; (b) the worst professor on campus, a publicity hound, and a nut who staged his own shooting.
For years no one would drink Lone Star beer because rednecks did; then one enterprising man figured out that if it was marketed right, everyone would want to drink Lone Star precisely because rednecks did.
They used to be virtuous and wooden and they were good. Now they’re commercial and plastic and they’re great.
Parceling out three new seats in Congress sounds like an easy job, but the Texas Legislature tried for two months and couldn’t do it.
The last word on tortillas: how to make them, when to eat them, and why they should be in every artist’s studio.
Bill Clements, unmasked at last.
How you can—and why you should—go camping in the middle of the week.
State highway patrolmen hate the 55 mph speed limit almost as much as other Texas motorists do, and for better reasons.
Clements is ready for the Legislature, but is the Legislature ready for him?
That’s what the Legislature is here to do, and unless we’re lucky, it just may.
Here’s how to achieve inner peace, perfect serenity, spiritual calm, and a nice, neat lawn.
Bob Bullock, in his flamboyant style, built a powerful state agency. Then Bob Bullock, in his flamboyant style, was seduced by its power.
Being autistic nearly ruined Michael Shipley’s life, but his parents sent him to a state mental hospital. Then Michael’s life was ruined for good.
You learn one clear and not so very grim lesson by looking death in the face.
You can always spot a smoker. He fiddles with matches, his shirt pocket bulges in a tiny rectangle, and fumes emerge from his mouth and nose. But what should we do about him?
Don’t look now, but the rather odd gentleman with the suspicious accent and outlandish military getup may not be exactly what he seems.
For legislators in Austin, home is where the bar is.
It will be up to the 66th Legislature to solve these problems, and we’ll have to live with the solutions.
What was once a mere rural spring is now a crowded, languorous, bare-skinned utopia.
The dark horses, heavy favorites, and close calls of this year’s big elections.
Burning a candle a day keeps the hexes away.
Balcones Fault is a show band with a head on its shoulders.
From alpha to omega, you can’t tell the sorority girls apart without a scorecard.
Especially for sorority sisters.
Nashville inspired Willie Nelson—to leave.
How a doctor got hooked on drugs, and how he got off.
Ringside as two dogs—father and son—fight to the death.
The University of Texas is playing the same old game—politics.
Austin is trading old houses for new offices. The City Council calls it progress.
Choosing the best features of Texas newspapers is a thankless job, hard on the spirit, and difficult for all the wrong reasons.
There are some restaurants in Austin that could coax wary gourmets out of their kitchens.
Those who enforce our narcotics laws often use the stuff themselves.
Austin does it again, an exciting new pas de deux for balletomanes: ballet and beer.
THE SIN OF AUSTININ AUSTIN RECENTLY, DURING A public hearing on skinnydipping in Lake Travis, local resident Louis Steinbach testified to attentive city councilmen: “God has the power to destroy this city for its sin…and officials had better realize it.” We do not want to appear soft on sin, but
