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Life of M opens with a pitch: “A little while ago, I told the actor M that I was thinking of writing her autobiography.” M is... Read More

I cannot easily remember a national treasure that has inspired a larger outpouring of eulogies, memories, and declarations than the passing... Read More

Dolly Parton died August 25, the most famous woman in country music and one of the few very famous artists left us. After about 60 years of... Read More

The importance of John Bunyan as a writer rests on more than one foundation. As an author of English prose, he stands forth as an almost... Read More

If you were online a decade ago, you remember the rise of political censorship in the 2010s. Thought police, often going by the Orwellian... Read More

A few months ago, I described the summer slate of movies as “weird.” The sentiment hasn’t waned at all since then; in fact,... Read More

Éric Rohmer published one novel, under the name Gilbert Cordier in 1946. He wrote Élisabeth when he was in his mid-twenties,... Read More

Most of the predictions about AI have proven dead wrong. You could get more reliable information by consulting tarot cards or a Ouija... Read More

Hyperpolitics is an odd book, right down to its cover. A plain lemon-yellow background with the title in all-caps, looking more like a... Read More

On this week’s episode of the RealClearInvestigations Podcast, RCI Editor J. Peder Zane and RCI Senior Reporter James Varney speak with... Read More

The first time Davis Bates visited Hampshire College, he was technically trespassing. With only a backpack and a sleeping bag, the high... Read More

In his feature film debut as director, producer, and screenwriter, Michael Russell Gunn’s The Brink of War presents a positive... Read More

For a long time our most heated public and academic debates have been almost uniformly characterized by false dichotomies. We are supposed to... Read More

I’ve spent this summer struggling to explain why I hate summer so much. I’ve written about this before, through the lens of... Read More

There are few cities in the world more badly in need of good wine than Washington, D.C. This is not because Washington lacks alcohol. Quite... Read More

I’m in the player garden next to Arthur Ashe Stadium, at the after-party for Novak Djokovic’s victory in the 2023 U.S. Open... Read More

Early in the American Revolution, the Continental Congress exempted printers’ apprentices from military service and ordered those... Read More

Says a narrator in Marlon James’s freshly Booker-nominated The Disappearers, “I’ve made such a terrible mess out of being a... Read More

To ban or not to ban? That’s the question universities must now ask themselves about technology in the classroom, as students... Read More

There is a portrait of Dolly Parton sitting on the porch of her childhood home. She has one glitzy cowgirl boot propped on an old log. Her... Read More

The hottest, driest summer on record is coming to an end, and all through the digital ether the call is going out: “THE MOVIES ARE... Read More

Imagine that you are a literary scout in 1950, traveling the country, swilling bad coffee, smoking too many cigars, sleeping in cheap motels,... Read More

“Tony,” the biopic released nationwide this week, will make you miss Anthony Bourdain even more than you already did. He was... Read More

I’ve never been able to understand why some people hate Bono so much. I’ve been a strong U2 fan since I was 16 years old, and... Read More

When I declared an English major at UCLA in the fall of 1980, the first thing I had to do was buy The Norton Anthology of English Literature,... Read More

There’s no such thing as a bad time to read Russell Kirk, but America’s 250th year is an especially good one. Kirk—the... Read More

Earlier this summer, while reading Skipping School: A History of American Homeschooling and How It Went Mainstream by historian Dixie Dillon... Read More

It was about time that Wile E. Coyote lawyered up. After decades of having Acme products blow up in his face while he’s blamed for the... Read More

It was ironic that the literary services start-up had been founded by an editor. But if you’d met her, that wouldn’t surprise... Read More

In a culture that cares about protecting the powerless, who is more powerless than very young children? To some, the answer is a mother who... Read More

I can’t tell you the first time I heard that old Carl Sandburg poem about Chicago. But I remember finding it alien: Chicago, in all... Read More

One reason I am so drawn to Missouri Williams’s writing is because, as many critics have pointed out, she writes like no one else. As I... Read More

An American icon without baggage—that’s a rare status, but Dolly Parton had it. You can say many things about her life because it... Read More

From the Editors: To fully understand this essay, it's necessary to be familiar with the old rhyme, "I do not like thee, Doctor Fell," and... Read More

THE IDEA OF “MIMESIS,” or copying from nature, as a core component of art casts a long shadow in our culture, dating from the... Read More

Sometimes names are so concrete and so poignant they define a person. Would Dolly Parton be the embodiment of the American musical tradition... Read More