Texas Monthly

For nearly 40 years, Kerry Max Cook fought to clear his name after being wrongfully convicted in a murder case. So why did he ask for his conviction back? Michael Hall reports on what happened to an innocent man after spending years in prison.

As the GOP discusses repealing the Affordable Care Act, it’s essential to look at some of the lives that nationalized health care has improved and saved, and at the activists who helped get eligible people enrolled. Here are a few from Texas.

In 1991, twelve-year-old Edwin Debrow killed a cab driver. Twenty-five years later, he remains in prison, continuing to be denied parole since 1999. Is the public better served by putting youngsters in adult prisons and keeping them off the streets for years and years?

Rachel Monroe investigates a T-shirt quilt empire that went under and the laypeople-turned-detectives who dedicated themselves to recovering their mementos lost in the chaos.

A profile of Jim Allison, a scientist whose research in immunology has helped pioneer new breakthrough cancer treatments.

Home renovation shows package the American dream from anxiety-riddled nightmare to easily-digestible entertainment. In this profile of Chip and Joanna Gaines, the stars of HGTV’s “Fixer Upper,” Taffy Brodesser-Akner goes long on how the couple works together and how they’ve managed to rebrand Waco, Texas as a place not of tragedy, but of shiplap and dreams.

“There it was, set out with cold data in the official report and with occasional colorful description in the newspaper reportage, the story of my father’s death. The story, in a way, of the beginning of my life.” A man uncovers the past of the father he never knew: a World War II pilot, James Erwin McLaughlin, who died in a crash in 1948.

In Texas, one respected Christian atmospheric scientist uses the Bible to make the case why other Christians—frequently political conservatives—need to treat global warming as a global moral issue. Not everyone is listening.

When she was 18 and eight months pregnant, Claire Wilson was critically wounded during the 1966 University of Texas Tower shooting. This is Wilson’s story, which goes into how her life was affected in the tragedy’s aftermath.

John Spong remembers his father, Will, an Episcopal priest, seminary professor, and grief counselor who helped people work through difficult times in their lives and left a lasting impact after his death.