RealClearBooks - Book News, Book Reviews, Publishing Industry Aggregator

2009 we went to visit the famous writer S. at his apartment in the seventh arrondissement of Paris, a neighborhood I’d passed through... Read More

In case you haven’t noticed, men and women are struggling with each other. Both groups report less interest in love and family than in... Read More

I owe Wendell Berry my life. Not literally, of course, but maybe in a deeper and more important sense, the life that I now lead. Considering... Read More

I used to ghostwrite SEO-optimized promotional web content for a living. I thought the good times would never end. Each morning, people... Read More

In Robert Earl Keen’s 1993 song “Corpus Christi Bay,” the narrator reflects on a life wasted. He works the oil rigs with... Read More

Matthew Gasda’s new novel, Stranger Beauty, is the ambitious tale of M, who’s life is uncovered within the novel’s... Read More

For all the mythic stature of Tupac Shakur, you’d have expected his murder trial to have been held somewhere with a little more... Read More

A tech startup called Orchid recently went viral for all the wrong reasons. Its launch ad showed a boyfriend forgetting his anniversary, too... Read More

You’ll have to read Marlon James’s new novel, The Disappearers, wearing asbestos gloves. The pages of this incomparable epic are... Read More

If you haven’t yet encountered the cover story for the August issue of The Atlantic, I have some bad news to share: "The End of Reading... Read More

Ten years ago, an editor at Penguin approached me to ask if I would like to edit a collection of essays by Wendell Berry for a British... Read More

In September of this year SUNY Press will publish Bill Kauffman’s twelfth book, Upstaters: Poets, Pols, Prophets, and Bush-League... Read More

The 250th anniversary year of the United States Declaration of Independence puts one in a frame of mind to reflect on what we consider... Read More

RICHARD RUSSO IS a regionalist. Like many celebrated US novelists—Sarah Orne Jewett, Sherwood Anderson, John Steinbeck, Jesmyn... Read More

1. This review of The Quarrymen by Caleb Caudell is late. I’ve seen a couple people say they zipped right through it. I did... Read More

If the past few years of American literary publishing have had a zeitgeist, it has been more like a series of geists from zeits past. There... Read More

Every child is taught that landfill is the worst place our trash can end up. It is the sad consequence of a failure to recycle: a mountain of... Read More

For three magical summers between 1997 and 1999, the women’s festival known as Lilith Fair was a touring caravan of musicians, feminist... Read More

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