Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

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

The Catastrophe Guru

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

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

Giant Steps

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

What Will Become of the Library?

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Robert Irwin in Marfa

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

The Last Book Sale

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

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

No Gogh!

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

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

The Wonderful World of Bluth

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

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

Lives in Limbo

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

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

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

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

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

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

Welcome to Texas, Elon

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

Wall Flowers

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

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

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

The Great Mellowing

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

The Image in the 21st Century

Unveiling “Austin”

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Dario Robleto artist profile

“Trapped” in the Limelight

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

The Clothes that Make the Man