Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

The Catastrophe Guru

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

Film Reviews and Local Arts Coverage

Austin Chronicle

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

Robert Irwin in Marfa

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

The Image in the 21st Century

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

What Will Become of the Library?

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Great Mellowing

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

No Gogh!

Welcome to Texas, Elon

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

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

Lives in Limbo

Giant Steps

The Clothes that Make the Man

Wall Flowers

The Last Book Sale

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

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

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Unveiling “Austin”

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.