From a Texas Monthly story by Mimi Swartz headlined “Remembering Paul Burka—The State’s Most Revered Political Writer Was the Heart and Soul of Texas Monthly”:

With Paul Burka’s death Sunday night at age eighty, there are almost too many losses to count. Galveston-born, educated at Rice University and the University of Texas law school, Paul loved Texas and knew more about it than anyone else on the Texas Monthlystaff, where he worked as an editor and writer from its earliest days in 1974 until his retirement in 2015. He knew its tiniest towns, its best barbecue, its worst small-time pols and best baseball players. More important, he knew what Texas should be and could be, and devoted his life to trying, heroically, to make it so.