Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Dario Robleto artist profile

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

The Clothes that Make the Man

No Gogh!

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

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

Giant Steps

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

What Will Become of the Library?

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

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Image in the 21st Century

The Great Mellowing

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Last Book Sale

Wall Flowers

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

The Catastrophe Guru

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Unveiling “Austin”

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Lives in Limbo

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

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

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

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

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

Welcome to Texas, Elon

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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?

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar