RealClearBooks Articles

Alice sat in the darkness of the cabin, waiting for the door to open. On the island she had not been waiting for anything. She’d walked where she pleased, over sandy shore and through the forest, wandering like an aimless ghost among the trees. She listened to the whistling of birds and spent her days sitting on the shore to regard the unending entertainment of waves that crashed and receded. The cabin possessed few such entertainments. She had felt along every inch of it, mapped every joint in the boards with her fingers. Her days on the island had been divided by the sun and moon, by...

In 1856, Lieutenant Henry Aaron Bird makes a startling discovery: a speechless, shipwrecked young girl, living a feral existence on a remote Pacific island. When he exhibits her as a “wild girl” in the chaotic sprawl of early San Francisco, this golden-haired child without a past will be seen by the populace as a scientific curiosity, a titillating image of female savagery, or, for many, a symbol of the unspoiled body of that young country. For Bird, she is a fragile ward in need of protection, whom he keeps drugged and confined when not using her to further his reputation. But...

Middle-age metabolism. If there is a more ferocious and vindictive beast that can be encountered in the autumn of life, I pray I never encounter it. The cruel markers of bodily decline in the infancy of old age accumulate like interest on a bad 2008 loan, drowning the borrower in corporal compounding interest: sore backs without cause, mottled vision and poor hearing, the augmenting allure of a midday nap. One day, we travelers of middle age awaken to discover all the nagging advice about stretching, sun block, and eating right was grounded in something resembling sound medical advice. Early...

In the age of modernity, we find ourselves confronting a familiar affliction: bleakness. Our lives are marked by disillusionment. We doom-scroll, our eyes glazed over, while once useful dopamine receptors quietly shoot their last remaining endorphins. The YouTube rabbit hole is not so much an experience in enjoyment as much as it is a reflex of our current era. We watch videos of others cosplaying luxurious livelihoods all while sitting in a darkened room hoping for something more. And then what few icons we may look to as heroes the world often tells us are evil. To put it simply: in the era...

When in November of 1849 Charlotte Brontë sent the gift of her second novel to the writer Harriet Martineau, she enclosed a note, writing that “Currer Bell offers a copy of Shirley to Miss Martineau’s acceptance, in acknowledgement of the pleasure and profit she”—then stopped, drawing a line through “she” and replacing it with “he” before continuing. Martineau, like her friend Elizabeth Gaskell, already doubted that Currer Bell was a man, claiming that passages in Jane Eyre about sewing could only have been written by a woman, “or an...

Somewhere on the southern edge of Greece, on the island of Rhodes, a tall man with a sunburned face and a body as if sculpted by centuries of salt and wind stood at the helm of a little, ridiculous-looking steel boat called Yellow Submarine, advertising rides to children. Having missed all the other regular ferries, I decided to board it. 'I came this far,' he said with a grin, 'because I'm escaping from my wife.' Then he turned to my Ukrainian friend, who fears boats but not Russian bombs, as she froze at the dock while six-year-olds jumped aboard. The captain caught her hesitation, pointed...

By all accounts, the new Superman film has been a major success. Released on July 11, 2025, it grossed $122 million on its opening weekend, marking the biggest debut ever for a standalone Superman movie. Still, the film has sparked debate after director James Gunn described it as a story about immigration. “I mean, Superman is the story of America — an immigrant that came from other places and populated the country,” he said. As a permanent resident who first came here as a student, I would go one step further: The story of Superman...

David Gergen was the right kind of fellow. Born in 1942 in Durham, North Carolina, his father chaired the mathematics department at Duke University, and served as director of a research office affiliated with the U.S. Army. As an undergraduate at Yale University, Gergen was regarded as a “likeable, well-informed guy,” according to a fellow member of Manuscript, his senior society. He served as managing editor of the Yale Daily News, producing articles and commentary that were “intended to make the system’s manifest good even better.” In 1967, he earned a law...

I was two years into college when I picked up the book “Real Education” by the much-maligned conservative Charles Murray. Even after the roughly 17 years since its publication, I found that the book surprisingly offered an educational perspective more conducive to student success than the more recent “College for All” movement I was surrounded by growing up.   In his book, Murray centers his discussion around four educational truths: ·       Academic ability...

The instruments of darkness tell us truths ~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth Preface Paterson, NJ Paterson is often described as physically static; a time warp rooted by a skyline of once vital mills. Some are brick and some are sandstone and all of them are vacant. Urban revitalization and other missions to lift this once great manufacturing hub, this mighty producer of silk, have been fitful. What has always anchored the city—its beating, iconic heart—are the Great Falls of the Passaic River. The falls are wonderous. They were both muse and motivation sparking Alexander...

Last year, Charli XCX lit a neon-green fire under the pop world with Brat — a brash, chaotic album that redefined what pop could sound like in 2024. The summer became dominated by the British singer’s viral success, seeping into the mainstream of American politics and everyday life. This summer, a thoughtful new star opens up the Brat universe to a broader audience: Addison Rae. Known first as a TikTok star, Rae spent the past year making the case that she’s more than a viral personality. With her belting scream on a remix of ‘Von...

Paterson, New Jersey, 1979: Jamie Palmieri is an up-and-coming patrol officer, three years out of the academy and frustrated with his slow rise to detective. That all changes one frigid night in January, when a double homicide at a local bar leaves the owner and a young woman dead. In the wake of the Rubin "Hurricane" Carter proceedings and the city's lingering distrust for the police, Jamie is told to expect a "no one saw a thing" investigation. But as Jamie traces a series of small leads, he's sent on a path where the tables turn suddenly - with the still-unknown killer now stalking Jamie...

On a sunny day in Alexandria’s historic Parker-Gray neighborhood, I knock on the door of a large brick house painted yellow with green trim. “You’re right on time,” says R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. His home is less than a mile from the banks of the Potomac River and only a few blocks from the offices of The American Spectator, the magazine Tyrrell founded in 1967. Dressed in khakis and brown tassel loafers, the pocket square a silken plume rising from the breast of his navy-blue blazer, Tyrrell motions past the sitting room to his library, where a large portrait of...

Excerpted from Stop All the Clocks. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Arcade Publishing. “I was raised in South Florida,” Marcos said once Mona had finished. He didn’t offer any sympathy for her or ask follow up questions, which, oddly enough, Mona appreciated. “West Palm Beach. There’s a neighborhood called Parker Ridge, where all the Cubans live. It’s also where the local branch of Alpha 66 is at. Any idea what that is?” “Devil-worshipping fraternity of freemasons,” Mona guessed. “Close. It’s an...

The ability of racial preferences to stigmatize black achievements first hit home for me in college in the early 1990s. Just before the start of my senior year, I received a job offer from the local newspaper. A short time later, I happened to run into a former editor of the college paper where I had previously worked and told her the news. “Congratulations,” she said. “I heard they were looking for more minorities.” We were on friendly terms, so I don’t think it was her intention to offend, but the remark still stung. For me, the episode illustrated...

In late May, Kermit the Frog gave a commencement address. He did so at graduation ceremonies for the University of Maryland, alma mater of the late Jim Henson, the father of the Muppets. From his very first utterance one thing was clear to all in attendance: There was a throat in this frog. Kermit’s well-received words were the fetching fruits of independent thought, refreshing for their absence of a political axe to grind. He was, in short, nobody’s toady. Still, not everyone in College Park leapt for joy over where the selection committee had landed for a commencement...

A Thrilling Debut that Explores the Profound Mysteries of Life in the Digital AgeMona Veigh was feeling burnt out from the tech world—and life in general. Following the death of her unconventional colleague, Avram Parr, and the collapse of her AI company that left her a hefty cash-out, Mona retreated to her home on Roosevelt Island, free to toss her phone into the East River and curl up with a good book, forever.However, strange occurrences intrude on Mona's permanent vacation and thrust her back into the world. Colleagues from her former company begin to track her down and let on that...

This piece contains spoilers on 'The Last of Us' HBO’s The Last of Us is best known for its aggressive foray into the culture war, but beneath its surface-level agenda the show is an occasionally poignant character study on parent-child relationships. The gruesome Season 2 finale somewhat unexpectedly leaned into the latter last weekend, delivering a nuanced evolution to one of TV’s most obnoxiously jaded characters. And while the season attempts to paint Ellie as a “bad guy,” it perhaps inadvertently gives her a path to redemption. Season 2 picks up five years after...

From the BQE she caught the holy hell of it, the way smoke was streaming from burning steel. It was cinema, bad fiction, a plot point dreamed up as too ridiculous for art and discarded somewhere else. She drove on thinking that soon this would all dissolve and she’d be back home, in bed, maybe with Saul at her side. Emmanuel sleeping in the next room, under his Yankee posters. Her phone would ring and it would be Liv. Remember that time— The radio was beginning to use the word terrorism. It was a distant concept to her, men in foreign lands with submachine guns and hidden bombs,...