RealClearBooks - Book News, Book Reviews, Publishing Industry Aggregator

We know Taylor Swift all too well. Her ubiquity makes her familiar, and familiarity breeds merch, memes, and multipart documentaries such as... Read More

Marvin Gaye was rarely happy. His career, at times, seemed to only serve as a launching pad for prying eyes to uncover the secrets of his... Read More

When Buckingham Palace announced that King Charles and Queen Camilla would visit the United States to mark the 250th anniversary of American... Read More

Looking for somewhere to move? Why not to a historic home? In today’s American Artifacts, James Taylor Foreman writes about his... Read More

I’ve got a recommendation for all of you. Don’t be bullied out of your own taste, especially by someone who evades a... Read More

John Cougar Mellencamp’s combative liberalism has long been an unexpected plot twist for casual fans, politicians, and country music... Read More

Given the masculine brutality endemic to noir fiction, it’s hardly surprising that many readers associate the genre with conservative,... Read More

We live in an era of constant reinvention and self-documentation, the careful crafting of an exterior life. But can we truly write our own... Read More

There are two kinds of boys in this world: boys who have good style, and boys who have bad style. I don’t need to say much about the... Read More

“It’s a bitch,” says Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. “And I thought it would kill... Read More

The author’s historical epic Lázár has become an unlikely international sensation Read More

In her seminal book, On Beauty and Being Just, Elaine Scarry notes that the encounter between Odysseus and Nausicaa in book six of... Read More

The Turing Test is shorthand for a 1950 thought experiment that the great mathematician, logician, computer-pioneer, and cryptographer Alan... Read More

When you first start a novel, there is often a joyous high. You have this great idea, you’re excited about it, and now you’re off... Read More

When Cosmopolitan1 asked me to write this cover story about my best friend Olivia Rodrigo, my first question for her was,... Read More

The new novel Yesteryear has an immediately intriguing premise. Natalie Heller Mills, a successful tradwife influencer, wakes up... Read More

When you turn off the interstate at Drummond, Montana, to head toward Philipsburg you immediately notice two things: the open and the quiet.... Read More

New York City at the close of the 19th century thrilled to an early heyday in the erratic history of American classical music. The presiding... Read More

In a cafe in the Financial District in April, I make an asinine proclamation along the lines of, “I like books.” That’s... Read More

Last year, I visited the MoMA to see Christian Marclay’s film The Clock. Stitching together clips from film and television that depict... Read More

During the lonely days of Covid, while in a text conversation with a longtime friend, I wrote that I was reading Julian Barnes’... Read More

Artist Molly Crabapple’s monumental Here Where We Live Is Our Country is by and for the dispossessed, including diaspora Jews... Read More

The focus of a recent conversation on the New York Times’s “The Opinions” podcast with Jia Tolentino and... Read More

Abdication It is true that, of the books that he loves best, the critic also prefers not to speak. —Blanchot1 I have stopped myself... Read More

LAURA B. MCGRATH’S Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction is not the first book about literary agents,... Read More

I have met them at close of dayComing with vivid facesFrom counter or desk among greyEighteenth-century houses.I have passed with a nod of... Read More

Tom Perrotta is best known for his comic novel Election — and for anticipating by 25 years the advent of Trump’s press... Read More

Most parents are familiar with the guilty feeling that goes along with handing their children a digital device. After years of scaring... Read More

In this episode of The Miller Report — Real Clear Journalism, we take a closer look at the upcoming RealClear Energy Future Forum,... Read More

The Faustian bargain was once a bad deal. The demon Mephistopheles offers you—a man in full at the dissatisfying limit of your great... Read More

My alma mater, Calvin University (“College” when I was there), celebrates its 150th anniversary this year. For most of its... Read More

Let’s imagine that you’re an aspiring writer from Lincoln, Nebraska. You move to New York and publish two well-received novels in... Read More

Two weeks ago, during the auspicious week of my birthday, I went to the Lena Dunham book party. Since then, the two copies... Read More

Stephen, this thing’s editor, has circulated an open challenge for a while now: Bulking, or getting really muscular,... Read More