Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Last Book Sale

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

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

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

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

What Will Become of the Library?

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Giant Steps

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

The Great Mellowing

The Image in the 21st Century

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Unveiling “Austin”

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

The Catastrophe Guru

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

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

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Wonderful World of Bluth

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

Lives in Limbo

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

Dario Robleto artist profile

Wall Flowers

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

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

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Welcome to Texas, Elon

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

No Gogh!