Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Clothes that Make the Man

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

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

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

The Last Book Sale

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

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

Wall Flowers

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

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

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

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

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

Giant Steps

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

No Gogh!

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

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

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Welcome to Texas, Elon

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Dario Robleto artist profile

Lives in Limbo

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

The Image in the 21st Century

The Catastrophe Guru

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Great Mellowing

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Unveiling “Austin”

What Will Become of the Library?

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)