RealClearBooks - Book News, Book Reviews, Publishing Industry Aggregator

“I love Poe!” a teenage girl exclaimed, racing toward a shelf of Edgar Allan Poe volumes. I was sitting in BookMarx, a small... Read More

The mountains spoke to Dolly Parton. Growing up in the deep green forests and dark hollers of East Tennessee, she listened to the rhythmic... Read More

The coroner said the manner of death was suicide, with “blunt or injury to the head, trunk and extremities.” The dead man’s... Read More

On January 8, 2025, as the Palisades fire consumed the neighborhoods perched on the hills above Los Angeles, a website called Polymarket... Read More

Humanity’s relationship with its mechanical helpers has always been a little bumpy. In a production of Lohengrin, the celebrated tenor... Read More

DAVID THOMSON, the British expat film historian with 45 books to his name, fears how movies have changed us. He has portrayed the... Read More

I hope she went in her wig. When I picture Dolly in her final moments, I want to believe she was wearing her tallest heels, with a full set... Read More

Greetings from the Biennale and dreamy, miraculous Venice, La Serenissima — and this time, they’re not kidding. This beauty,... Read More

Flames the height of Penicillium fungus. A wasp the volume of a speck of dust and its thimble-sized chalet made of cellophane. Destiny... Read More

William T. Vollmann’s subject is 9/11. Always is, always was. Even before the attacks happened, they were somehow his thing. An... Read More

Canceled graduate students, killer (literally) dissertations, an agitated cadre of revolutionary university landscapers, a Gen X professor... Read More

America lost one of its foremost historians in June when Gordon S. Wood was killed in an automobile accident near his home in Providence,... Read More

“I never want to repeat myself, and all my films have been on the money,” said Sir Ridley Scott, promoting his new film, The Dog... Read More

I appreciated Dolly Parton’s singing and acting, and especially her songwriting, but I was most impressed by her ability to carve out a... Read More

For decades, the free outdoor summer performances put on by Manhattan’s Public Theater have been a pillar of New York City’s... Read More

One of my best friends retired at the end of the school year.  We taught together for almost thirty years in the same social studies... Read More

Let me tell you a small story that makes me sad, which is part of a big story that makes me sadder. It’s about the death of Six Flags... Read More

What is the question of autofiction: Is it true, or is it a good story? Does it matter? Or do we not, in fact, find the speculation to be its... Read More

John Ross knows a thing or two about self-deception. The songwriter and frontman of Wild Pink fills Still Coming Down, the latest from the... Read More

Singer-songwriter-actress Dolly Parton, whose glittering country music stardom was matched by her pop fame and popular parallel careers in... Read More

There’s a reason every Dolly Parton song feels like it finds a home in the deepest part of your soul. Writing from her heart, she set... Read More

The data centers have been speaking to me lately, in the form of ChatGPT slop. Read More

While I read Edwidge Danticat’s new novel about gun violence, six members of a family died by gunfire in Winfield, Kansas; another five... Read More

A movie star and a novelist make friends. One day the writer tells the star that she wishes to write the star’s... Read More

Dolly Parton, the last surviving First Lady of Country Music, has died. Like the other first ladies Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn and Patsy... Read More

In Rachel Cusk’s new novel, Life of M, the famous actor protagonist participates in an event at a book store after hours. The actor, M,... Read More

Few past philosophers have as much present influence as David Hume, the pre-eminent Scottish Enlightenment thinker, who died on Aug. 25,... Read More

It is difficult to venture into the sticky threads of the world wide web without encountering ominous admonitions about the threat of more... Read More

IT’S BEEN THREE YEARS since “the mandate” came down: unmarried people are only allowed to have sex one day a year. Every... Read More