Texas

Amer grew up in Kuwait, where he enjoyed a comfortable life — until he was 9, and the first Gulf War forced his family to flee to the U.S. in 1991. His new series is Mo.

In their new book, Forget the Alamo, Bryan Burrough and co-writers Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford challenge common misconceptions surrounding the conflict — including the notion that Davy Crockett was a martyr who fought to the death rather than surrender.

Locke says her new novel "was about place before it was about a character." The story follows a black ranger who patrols East Texas searching for the missing son of an Aryan Brotherhood leader.

Torn, who died Tuesday, won an Emmy Award for playing the gruff producer Artie on The Larry Sanders Show. In 1994, he told Fresh Air that he based his character on Johnny Carson's long time producer.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lawrence Wright predicts that the largest "red" state in the union will eventually move into the "blue" column — and change the nation's politics in the process.

Married couple Rennie and Brett Sparks have been making songs together as The Handsome Family for 21 years. In 2014, they gained much wider fame when their haunting song, "Far From Any Road," became the theme for the first season of HBO's True Detective.

Two masked robbers clean out small branches of a Texas bank in David Mackenzie's new neo-Western. Critic David Edelstein calls Hell or High Water a work of "broad scale and deep feeling."

Chris Tomlinson covered conflict, including apartheid in Africa, for 11 years. Then the great-great-grandson of Texas slaveholders realized he needed to write a book about his family's history.

Boyhood is about a boy in Texas whose parents have separated. Filmed over 12 years, audiences watch him grow up — and his worldview evolve. The cumulative power of the movie is tremendous.

Journalist Carolyn Jones wrote about her experience with the law for The Texas Observer after having an abortion last year. The state requires that a woman seeking an abortion receive a sonogram at least 24 hours before the procedure.

Journalist Robert Draper's article for The Atlantic traces how the redistricting process has been manipulated for electoral gain. It has created increasingly solid Republican or Democratic congressional districts, which has led to more representatives who are unwilling to compromise, Draper tells Fresh Air.

Quanah Parker, considered the greatest Comanche chief, was the son of Cynthia Ann Parker, a white pioneer woman kidnapped by a raiding party when she was a little girl. Their story — and the saga of the powerful American Indian tribe — is told by S.C. Gwynne in his new book, Empire of the Summer Moon.

The Grammy-winning country-music fiddler is still recording new tracks 70 years after he picked up his first instrument. Gimble's new album, Playing With Friends, features Vince Gill, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and Garrison Keillor.

Reverend Carroll Pickett was the death-house chaplain at the Walls prison unit in Huntsville, Texas for 13 years. During his tenure, he ministered to 95 inmates executed by lethal injection. He is the subject of a new documentary, At the Death House Door.

Kyle Chandler plays Coach Eric Taylor on Friday Night Lights, the NBC-TV series about the big drama of small-town Texas high-school football. The third season of the series will be shown on DirecTV before airing on NBC in 2009.

Few musicians are as identified with Texas as the late Doug Sahm. But Sahm also spent five years in exile in California, where rock historian Ed Ward got to know him. Ed takes a look at this period, in which he says Sahm and his band, the Sir Douglas Quintet, did some of their most lasting work.

In his new book, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate he charts the history of the relationship between the powerful Texas oil industry and politics. His last book, Pipe Dreams, documented the infamous rise and fall of Enron. Bryce's work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Guardian.

Walser has been called "the best pure cowboy singer in the state" ("Houston Chronicle"). At age 60, he retired from his job as a Texas state internal auditor to concentrate on his music. He just released an album called "Rolling Stone From Texas." He joins Fresh Air with his guitar to sing a few songs.

Pierce won the "Songwriter of the Year" award at the 1993 Austin Music Awards. A tribute album of her songs performed by other singers, "Across the Great Divide," won the Album of the Year Award. She's originally from Lubbock, Texas, and little known outside the state. Her songs are quirky, and spiritual. Pierce also wrote and performed the one-woman show, ""Bad Girls Upset About the Truth," told in story and song about her problems with men and Jesus.

Journalist Molly Ivins from Austin, Texas. She calls herself a "dripping fangs liberal," and believes that by being objective journalists take all the color out of human affairs. She says, "politics ought to be covered the way sports is, as a celebration of heroes and villians." She's taken on Ron and Nancy Reagan, George Bush, and the "bubbas" in the Texas Legislature.