Excerpt: How to Close a Camp
Detention was sold as both a law-and-order necessity and an economic opportunity, welding together the racist politics of the drug war with the rise of private prisons.
Books
Inside Houston’s 1970 School Strike
Texas poet's new book gives Houston's "huelga" school movement iconic verses, images, and voices.
A Queer Texan Retraces Steinbeck’s 10,000-mile trip
Austin author and essayist Lauren Hough serves up a monster of a tale about traveling with a dog named Woody Guthrie on a road trip across America.
Leaving His Mark On Houston’s Inprint
Rich Levy, the man behind the Bayou City’s prestigious reading series and the brains behind Inprint, an unusual literary nonprofit, is retiring.
The Aesthete from Archer
A new biography of Larry McMurtry tells the tale of a writer ever met with misreading.
Mythbusting Texas’ Reactionary Past
A new book doesn't romanticize our state's history, but it does establish a neglected throughline of solidarity.
A Wall That’s Worth Defending
Some evangelical Christians are hammering away at the very church-state separation that allowed them, and other believers, to first flourish in America.
Get the newsletter
American Citizenship and Other Myths
We shouldn’t ignore the protofascism brewing on the JD Vance-aligned right. But the status quo ante isn’t good enough either.
In El Paso, a Homecoming Marred by Violence
A native El Pasoan reflects in a new book on her bustling Texas border city’s roots—and one of the most tragic days of its modern life.
The ‘Queen Mother’ of the Reparations Movement Gets Her Due
A UT-Austin historian tells the under-told story of Audley Moore, “one of the most important activists and theorists of the twentieth century.”