Jeff Salamon

Dec 24, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Mimi Swartz |Jeff Salamon

Somehow I missed much of the late-fall hype surrounding the release of Sarah LaBrie’s No One Gets to Fall Apart (Harper)—the “Best Books of Fall” plug from Oprah’s website, the favorable New York Times review, the Vogue Q&A—and I’m glad I did. It’s the kind of book that’s best to come upon by accident, like hitting it off with someone at an otherwise deadly cocktail party.

Oct 1, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Andrew Graybill |Jeff Salamon

Spend enough time in our state capital—say, an afternoon—and you’re almost certain to hear a version of “the Austin jeremiad.” It’s a parable of declension, with the narrator wailing that the Austin of today isn’t nearly as appealing as the city of yesteryear.

Jul 29, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Daniel Oppenheimer |Jeff Salamon

It’s been almost a decade since the Austin elementary school my kids attended, the school formerly known as Robert E. Lee Elementary, was the site of an early skirmish in the latest round of American culture wars. From 2015 to 2016, I was in the center of it all, along with my wife and a small group of similarly liberal and left-wing parents who organized to change the school’s name to something less awful.

Jul 24, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Andrew Graybill |Jeff Salamon

As a high school student in the mid-1980s, I became fascinated with the Vietnam War. Perhaps this was because at the time I was not much younger than many of the troops had been when they were drafted. Or maybe I was beguiled by movies like Apocalypse Now, the Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket, and Platoon, which had kept the war roiling in the public consciousness. I read books by Michael Herr, Tim O’Brien, and Neil Sheehan, and even had a map of Southeast Asia taped to my closet door.

Jun 20, 2024 | texasmonthly.com | Jessica Goudeau |Jeff Salamon

Austin writer Jessica Goudeau’s second book, We Were Illegal: Uncovering a Texas Family’s Mythmaking and Migration, which was published this week by Viking, is a deeply researched examination of the lives—and lies—of Goudeau’s extended clan, who first came to Texas in the 1820s. When my classmates asked me, as a new fourth grader in Memphis, Tennessee, recently transplanted from San Antonio, if I knew any Texas Rangers, they were probably thinking of the baseball team.