The Texas Observer began publishing in Austin in 1954, and in the past five decades it has been an important voice in Texas culture and politics. Following in the muckraking tradition of George Seldes and I. F. Stone, the Observer has championed honest government, civil rights, labor, and the environment, providing a platform for many of the state's most outspoken writers - Roy Bedicheck, Willie Morris, Molly Ivins, Amado Muro, Maury Maverick, Jim Hightower, and Dagoberto Gilb, to name a few. To mark the Observer's fiftieth anniversary in 2004, Char Miller has gathered a cross-section of the best work to appear in its pages. While the Observer has ventured beyond Texas in its editorial coverage, Miller has chosen pieces that specifically speak to the state's politics, people, environment, culture, and locales. With a foreword by Molly Ivins, these pieces form a progressive chronicle of a half-century of life in Texas.