Michael Agresta – words & ideas

I write about art, ideas, culture, and

Portfolio

Vincent Valdez: The Big Picture

Life During Wartime (book review)

LA Review of Books

Cult or Cure? (MDMA and PTSD)

Will the Next Election Be Hacked?

The Great Mellowing

Wall Flowers

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

The Fantastic World of Cande Aguilar

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

The Last Book Sale

Robert Pruitt: Wards Matter

The Great Texas Novel about the Spanish Flu

A Bigger Canvas (Houston Feature)

Travel & Leisure

Welcome to Texas, Elon

What We Talk About When We Talk About Cults

Pacific Standard

How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

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

The Wonderful World of Bluth

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

“Trapped” in the Limelight

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

No, Austin Won’t Become Silicon Valley 2.0

Giant Steps

Forgetting How to Read? Stop Reading Online.

100 Ways to Draw a Line (Transborder Biennial)

At Age 86, Painter Roger Winter Is Still Reinventing Himself

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

The Redemption of Sinead O’Connor

Robert Irwin in Marfa

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

Bonnie and Clyde at 50

Unveiling “Austin”

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

A Tree Grows in San Antonio (Margarita Cabrera)

Adios Utopia, Hello Texas

Mark Rothko, Houston’s Absent Son

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

Marfa, Texas Is Getting Its Own Solar-Powered Stonehenge

Lives in Limbo

Illustrating Border Life for the Next Generation

Can Hackers Mess With Texas’s Elections?

Trenton Doyle Hancock: His Pet Monsters

The Image in the 21st Century

Dario Robleto artist profile

How the Western Was Lost, and Why It Matters

What Is the Greatest Artwork in Texas?

The Clothes that Make the Man

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

What Will Become of the Library?

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box

Cody Wilson, Austin’s Edgelord Prince

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

No Gogh!

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

What Will Become of the Paper Book?

The Steve Jobs of West Texas

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

The Catastrophe Guru