Ruth Pennebaker

  • The Textbook Plot

    The State Board of Education today instructed publishers to curtail positive coverage of Islam and include more favorable treatment of Christianity in future world [...] Full Story

  • The Road to Compromise

    A former bus driver has sued the Capital Area Rural Transportation System, charging that the nine-county transit service discriminated against him based on his [...] Full Story

  • Irrevocable Acts

    This story starts with death. Then it gets worse. But I’m getting ahead of myself. My father died on May 15. He was 85 [...] Full Story

  • The Better Half

    So I’ve come to the point in my life that I read a book and talk back to it. That’s what Laura Bush’s autobiography, [...] Full Story

  • Taking the Reins

    Fifteen or so years ago, I sat across a dinner table from a Dallas state district court judge who delighted in the sound of [...] Full Story

  • Unearthing Aurora

    Lost Books of Texas “Terms of Endearment is a book?” a well-read friend asked recently. “I didn’t know that. I thought it was just [...] Full Story

  • If the Revolution is Over, Does That Mean We Won?

    People of a certain age are always talking, sadly and nostalgically, about the bright, unfulfilled dreams of their youth. I’m of a certain age [...] Full Story

  • Lost in the Reads

    You get rid of … your books?” one of my younger friends asked. She looked aghast—as if I’d just announced that I ate my [...] Full Story

  • The Big O

    Second in a series on recession-era Texas. ODESSA-Oh, sure. You can laugh about this flat, dry part of the world, where the streets are [...] Full Story

  • Commentary

    Betty Jo Harper, a silver-haired, bespectacled teacher from tiny Paint Creek, Texas, has numbered many successes in her 83 years. Every spring, her prize-winning [...] Full Story