RealClearBooks - Book News, Book Reviews, Publishing Industry Aggregator

Something awful happens when you start to achieve a degree of success as a writer. All of a sudden, people sidle up to you at parties, stick... Read More

For nearly as long as I have been a fan of the novels of Anne Tyler, I have been a reluctant fan of the novels of Anne Tyler. From the time I... Read More

I had my first sight of Edna O’Brien on the stage of the Gate Theater in Dublin in the mid-Sixties. Censorship of books, plays and... Read More

My intention on an early July morning was not to wake up at four o’clock to check on my students’ AP scores. It’s obsessive... Read More

The first thing I saw was a poem. A friend posted Wendell Berry’s “How to Be a Poet (to remind myself),” and at first, it... Read More

“I’m never happier than when I’m with my dad, watching baseball on TV, drinking whiskey and talking about the... Read More

In January 2020, I was house-sitting in Honolulu, on the island of Oahu. My then-girlfriend visited from New York. Walking on a beach, we saw... Read More

Grandma bought the tape at an I-40 truck stop on the way to Albuquerque for a horse race. Grandma didn’t like stopping. Didn’t... Read More

You are probably familiar with the Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times." Such was the course of life of the Marquis de... Read More

KESSA ENTERS MY OFFICE in Uptown Manhattan full of anxious energy, fidgety, fast-talking, desperate for a quick fix.* The 16-year-old... Read More

The ongoing dispute over how the Smithsonian should present American history has pitted the Trump administration against the museum... Read More

We have reached that time of year again. Every good tomato suddenly prompts the pondering: Will this be the last one for the season? The heat... Read More

Like reading classic literature, viewing and studying classic film is a means of examining our consciences and safeguarding against the... Read More

Every kid has a favorite athlete. If you loved speed, it was Rickey Henderson or Randy Moss. Agility? Barry Sanders. Attitude? Allen Iverson.... Read More

The last remaining 15 terrorist detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison are considered the “worst of the... Read More

The emergency call alerting police to what might quite reasonably be labeled Tiger Woods’s Fourth Great Automotive Disaster came at... Read More

As smoking gives us something to do with our hands when we aren’t using them, so Time [magazine] gives us something to do with our... Read More

The rumoured demise of books has produced plenty of books. In 1985, Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death explained how the showy... Read More

Ever since Peter Plagens nominated me the principal critic of art critics (I think he was irritated at the time, because I’d been... Read More

For almost two decades, I believed the closest I’d ever get to the life of Bret Easton Ellis was living in the Bennington College dorm... Read More

Journalism is “the first rough draft of history,” as Washington Post publisher Philip L. Graham famously put it in 1963. Which... Read More

‘Suppose that, every morning, when we tore the wrapper off our paper with fevered hands, a transmutation were to take place, and we... Read More

The so-called genie of the gambling bottle was released in 2018, when the Supreme Court determined that the prior federal ban on sports... Read More

A tropical rain had landed in Singapore, breaking the swelter of October’s first days. It was a period of anticipation and planning... Read More

It’s hard to keep loving the movies when we realize how much damage they’ve done. In A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist... Read More

The weather has become untrustworthy, for determining the seasons and otherwise. As I write this introduction, the leaves remain stubbornly... Read More

Once, I went to my firm’s Christmas party all alone. At my department’s holiday dinner just a couple of nights prior, my... Read More

Rereading the 9/11 Commission Report triggers a flood of memories for anyone over 30. The “just-the-facts” description of the... Read More

The reviews of Rachel Cusk’s Life of M, a roman à clef surely about Natalie Portman published in late August, have been... Read More

It’s being shouted from all corners: The U.S. Open has become an overcrowded, overpriced circus awash in influencers, aspirational... Read More

We got inside an old icebox down by the creek near the little woods. . . . The door closed with a metal click. We had Southern accents; we... Read More

When Army Air Forces officer Claude Eatherly piloted the plane Straight Flush in support of Enola Gay’s mission to obliterate the city... Read More

The first hour of Na Hong-jin’s Hope holds its own among the greatest monster thrillers in film history. If the South Korean film was... Read More

Adam Curtis’s HyperNormalisation is ten years old this October. First uploaded onto BBC iPlayer between the Brexit referendum in June... Read More

My generation was the first to come of age with social media. From the beginning, there was reason for skepticism. My early memories of... Read More