RealClearBooks - Book News, Book Reviews, Publishing Industry Aggregator

Twenty years ago this month, Google launched Gmail. At first, user numbers were deliberately kept low, and those with access would hoard... Read More

Patricia Highsmith’s novels have a long history in Hollywood. Her debut, Strangers on a Train, was adapted in 1951 by Hitchcock... Read More

In the first half of the twentieth century, literature, like philosophy, experienced a breakdown in its trust of language. This signaled,... Read More

In 1968, a notoriously caustic science fiction writer accused Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry of peddling “utopian bullshit.”... Read More

Anyone who hasn’t been Very Online since 2020 may be wondering why Mumford & Sons co-founder Winston Marshall, the British guy who... Read More

Card collectors refer to an unopened sealed box or pack of cards as “wax.” For many collectors, myself included, much of the... Read More

This one goes out to any author who’s ever felt bad about not making it onto a list of most anticipated books of the season. And to... Read More

To hear Jerry Seinfeld deconstruct a joke is like watching a world-renowned artist paint something just for you. Take his beloved Pop-Tart... Read More

I just don’t get Taylor Swift. There, I said it. (DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT DISLIKE HER. I WISH HER ALL OF THE HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS IN... Read More

This week fellow Substacker Elle Griffin published “No one buys books,” which looks at quotes and stats from the DOJ vs. PRH... Read More

Shakespeare is widely recognized as one of the preeminent poets of the English language. Throughout his poetry, readers encounter both the... Read More

Every American concerned about the dismal state of the nation’s intelligence agencies should read J. Michael Waller’s riveting... Read More

There is a real story about how Pop-Tarts were invented: In 1964, the breakfast food company Kellogg’s (which now operates as... Read More

Substack Fam, it’s been a minute. A bit over a month, to be exact, which will be the new cadence around here—just so you... Read More

All children find themselves living in a new world papered with strange hieroglyphics. Most of the time, they must wait to be enrolled in an... Read More

The meta topic sitting beneath the surface of Daniel Miller’s sprawling essay on revolution is a study on the nature of... Read More

On a recent tour of British bookshops, the American author Percival Everett visited Bath. He spent some time signing copies of his most... Read More

Jessi Jezewska Stevens’s fiction wryly examines the vagaries of living in an age of downward mobility and phone-based anomie—with... Read More

Robert Frost first joined literary society when he gatecrashed a bookshop party in the winter of 1913. Frost had no invitation. He was a... Read More

Before the subjects of The Rebels became famous, the Democratic Party sold out. It is a long, sad and tawdry story that Joshua Green tells of... Read More

Kings, presidents, and corporate titans may not undergo Shakespeare’s seven parts in their careers. But all rise to power, exercise it,... Read More

At a meeting of a prominent theosophical society held in the early years of the twentieth century, Theodore Burne Bramble delivered a lecture... Read More

My first thought was of Yeats, for whom the “dragon” is not beauty (as John Pistelli glosses the title of the... Read More

Among last year’s cavalcade of Big Ideas movies, Alexander Payne’s quiet period dramedy “The Holdovers” was, I think,... Read More

The tennis match that begins, ends, and provides the central narrative framework for Challengers, the vibrant new film from director Luca... Read More

TikTok could be “harming vulnerable Americans” or exposing our democracy to “covert foreign... Read More

At the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., maybe the most prestigious nonmajor tournament on the global tennis tour, players conduct... Read More

Risky Business, the classic 1983 film starring Tom Cruise, will be re-released in June as part of the prestigious Criterion... Read More