RealClearBooks Articles

"The people have spoken — the bastards." Dick Tuck, the old Democratic prankster, conceded an election with that line. Tuck knew his way around the back room. He rode in Bobby Kennedy's ambulance the night Kennedy was shot, and he needled Richard Nixon so smartly that Nixon's own tapes record a begrudging respect. (In 1968 he sent a very pregnant Black woman to wander a Nixon rally in a "Nixon's the One!" T-shirt.) After Watergate, Nixon's former chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, told him, "You started all of this." Tuck's answer: "Yeah, Bob, but you guys ran it into the ground." We just...

My formative years would have been quite different without Tim Burton’s early string of classic movies. Whenever I felt the need to escape from the world, I was able to travel to Burton’s universe, to bask in its craziness and paradoxical sanity. Burton’s films are visually striking, thematically rich, and punctuated with flashes of creative inspiration that act as doorways, inviting the audience forward. The stories are often ephemeral, but the individual moments stick in the brain, as do the characters. Witness Pee Wee Herman: that weird, geeky man-child in a suit that...

Two things can be true at once. In the new movie You Can See Everything, from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, Amanda Seyfried is an annoying liberal who nags Elizabeth Holmes’ rich fiancé, Billy Evans, over his support for the late Charlie Kirk. And yet, despite Evans’ admirable taste in public figures—something otherwise predictable and conventional for Hollywood elites to deride—Evans, himself, does not come off as a good guy. You Can See Everything explores Holmes, the disgraced Theranos founder, through the lens of Canadian filmmaker Fielder, known...

Everybody says Nero fiddled while Rome burned. No one says the fiddle was invented fourteen centuries later, and Tacitus, in the Annals, writes that the emperor was down the coast at Antium when the fire broke out in Rome during the summer of A.D. 64. He must have been holding a press conference. Because that is what New York’s leaders did in 1986. Imagine you are out for a stroll in the south end of Central Park in the spring of that year. Carriage horses clopping along the drive, pretzel carts steaming on 59th Street, softball on the Sheep Meadow, and in the middle of it all a...

Excerpted from Independence Hall: The History of an American Icon (Creed & Culture) Americans do not associate Independence Hall, the stage for both the Declaration and the Constitution, with Abraham Lincoln. But between 1861 and 1865, crucial dates in the president’s and the nation’s lives, Lincoln was present at the Philadelphia government building and briefly dislodged Independence Hall’s identification with 1776. Lincoln’s Inaugural Train from Springfield, Illinois to Washington, made stops in Indianapolis, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Albany, and...

Gaming has a new breakout genre—but it's a weak substitute for meaningful memory-making. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, “friendslop,” or cooperative, small-budget online games, has become the go-to way to link up with friends. Titles frequently sell millions of copies quickly and feature low-stakes tasks, cartoonish graphics and physics, and no plot. However, most offer only bite-sized dopamine rushes that distract from and prevent real community-building. The digital age yearns for a sense of community and belonging that feels lost. Tying people to their screens does little...

As the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens its doors to great fanfare in Los Angeles, it’s worth remembering that there is much more to George Lucas than Star Wars and Indiana Jones. In the 1980s, as he shepherded his famous creations—and facilitated the infamous Howard the Duck—he helped fund a treasure trove of offbeat movies, some of which would not have been made without him, and all of which deserve attention. The decade kicked off with Kagemusha, one of the best films from Japanese writer-director Akira Kurosawa, whose work Lucas famously admires, and whose Hidden...

An Excerpt from Sun Deluxe: New and Collected Stories by Frederick Barthelme Celia and Em sit in a booth at a diner near the bus station. The place is filled with jangly rock music. Their table has red vinyl seats and a boomerang-pattern top on which there are huge sodas in heavy glasses and brown platters of wet fries. A gum-smacking waitress is zinging around. “OK, here’s the deal,” Celia says. “We ask Fred if we can bunk on the couch, or in the garage—wherever.” Em shoves the food away from her. “You disgust me, Celia.” “Do not,”...

The 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s comprised the true golden age of cinema. This amazing period saw the rise of the summer blockbuster, yet the quest for commercial success went hand in hand with innovation, creative freedom, and artistic merit. The era was marked by rapid technological advancement, alongside a kaleidoscopic variety of films; and 1999, the final year of the era, was one of the greatest years in the history of the medium. The parade of memorable 1999 movies went on and on. At any given moment, it was possible to step into a theater and discover an acclaimed film like The Matrix,...

Cultivating social connection and combatting loneliness ought to be the bipartisan effort of our time. Whether you’re a social conservative or a Bernie-loving progressive, the fact remains that we are social creatures, hardwired for companionship and common cause. Senator Chris Murphy understands this, perhaps better than any one of his colleagues in Congress. In his new book, Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America, Murphy sets himself apart from the other establishment suits in his conference by demonstrating, not only the ability to...

During Henry’s Kissinger’s famous “Year of Europe” speech in 1973, the then Assistant for National Security affairs observed that, “our values, our goals, and our basic interests are most closely identified with those of Europe.” Indeed, while perhaps Kissinger’s remarks were accurate when taken in the context of Soviet repression and a shared continental commitment to containing the threat, the transatlantic consensus he described has since frayed. Have some East Asian countries moved to take Europe’s place as free speech protectors? Last...

As a slow train passes through Ukrainian towns, one sight is impossible to miss: cemeteries filled with flowers, flags and recently turned earth. By Zelensky’s count, Ukraine has lost more than 55,000 soldiers. Russia has lost far more. Western estimates put total Russian casualties at more than 1 million since February 2022. In 2025 alone, nearly 420,000 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded. The territory gained at that cost amounted to just 0.8 percent of Ukraine. Most of that land is in Donbas, the industrial east of Ukraine, and a region of coal mines that Russia has tried to...

Sun Deluxe: New and Collected Stories brings together a decades-arcing assemblage of work, pairing new and previously unpublished pieces with some of Frederick Barthelme’s classic stories previously published in some of America’s most prestigious magazine and journals.  Known for his unorthodox structure, minimalistic style, and sharp emotional insight, readers will find themselves immersed in his world of condos, truck-stop diners, and characters caught in the delicate act of revising their expectations, misreading one another, and figuring things out, again. This...

You’ve probably heard the refrain before, but it bears repeating: The West is the best. As I write this, it’s nearly one hundred degrees Fahrenheit here in Brooklyn. Thank God for air conditioning. The air conditioner, by the way, was invented by the New York-born Willis Carrier in the early part of the twentieth century. Willis was, without question, a product of Western Civilization. Before the AC—which we, no doubt, take for granted nowadays—our ancestors, when faced with the dog days of summer, would have no choice but to sit on ice blocks, drink cold beverages,...

Venice is a city of water. Its roads, commerce, security, and success are due to the intertwining canals that appear labyrinthine to the stranger yet form a safety net for natives. For over a thousand years, the Serenissima Republic of Venice dominated the seas, amassing wealth, spearheading technology, and producing breathtakingly beautiful art, from glass to canvas. Now in 2026, for the 61st edition of the Biennale Exhibition of Art and Culture, the United States of America, a young republic celebrating its 250th anniversary, has disembarked on these shores to dialogue with its ancient...

*This review contains spoilers* “We’re all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” That’s one of my favorite Oscar Wilde quotes, from Lady Windermere’s Fan. The playwright was being his usual playful/metaphorical self. But if you get a tad more literal, you could change “some” to “most,” because who among us, from early childhood onward, at one time or another, did not indeed look up at the starry firmament and wonder what was there? That conundrum has been with us from time immemorial. The ancients dreaded what was above...

Sometimes certain books just sort of seem to fall into your hands, out of the blue, and resonate. Maybe it was the C.S. Lewis endorsement on the back of Arthur C. Clarke’s 1954 sci-fi novel Childhood’s End that initially caught my interest when I picked it up off the table in the graduate school floor at Oklahoma State University, but the first few pages of the book were more than enough to pull me in. Science fiction is often treasured for its capacity to prophesy future hopes and horrors, and of course we have our classic examples: Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Brave New...

On a recent Tuesday evening in Nashville, I stood for an hour in a long line on the front porch of the Nashville Songwriters Association building on Music Row, along with about a hundred other would-be songwriters. Some had been waiting as long as two and a half hours, bundled against the cold. Only the first fifty in line would earn one of the coveted spots to play a song for a music publisher. A girl with a clipboard eventually made her way down the line, handing out numbered cards as those of us further back anxiously waited to see if we'd make the cutoff. Close call. I was number...

Bob Woodson died peacefully at his home on the evening of May 19, 2026, at the age of 89. He was a national treasure, beloved by the thousands he served through the Woodson Center for over four decades, yet never quite understood by Presidents, from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump, who often invited him to the White House. Senators, Congressmen, and every Speaker of the House from Jack Kemp to Paul Ryan caught sight of Bob’s vision of an America fully redeemed from its “birth defect of slavery,” as he called it, but few fully embraced his remarkable plan to heal wounds, foster...