Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Houston’s National Women’s Conference, 40 Years Later

While We Were Sleeping: The Feds Say a Price-fixing Scheme Costs Texas Patients Tens of Millions

Has a San Antonio Inventor Solved a Problem of Small-scale Wind Power?

The Image in the 21st Century

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

Lives in Limbo

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Did Texas Blackouts Reveal Austin’s New Real-Estate Hot Spots?

The Psychedelic State of South Texas (Fernando A. Flores)

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

The People’s Champion (Vincent Valdez’s ‘Dream Baby Dream’)

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

No Sign of Trump’s “Millions” of Illegal Voters in Texas

The Last Book Sale

The Clothes that Make the Man

Brutally Suppressed in Her Lifetime, Gertrude Beasley Is Finally on Our Bookshelves

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

“Trapped” in the Limelight

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Sedrick Huckaby Looks His Subjects in the Eye, from Dreamers to an Ex-President

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Welcome to Texas, Elon

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Giant Steps

Wall Flowers

Unveiling “Austin”

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Luz Maria Sanchez: Narco Violence, as Seen by a Journalist-Turned-Artist

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

EAST Austin Is Over. What’s Next for an Art Scene That’s Losing Its Nucleus?

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

No Gogh!

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

What Will Become of the Library?

The Catastrophe Guru

Dario Robleto artist profile

Houston Photo Exhibit Documents First Markers of Modern U.S.-Mexico Border

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The ‘Moby Dick’ of Texas Football Novels Is Hard-hitting as Ever

The Great Mellowing