RealClearBooks - Book News, Book Reviews, Publishing Industry Aggregator

Not long ago, I shared stories from my background in publishing—my battles to get books into print, my occasional successes and... Read More

What will it take to be fulfilled by life? Love, perhaps, or community, power, or professional success. At different points in my life I... Read More

The American dream, according to Slavoj Žižek, amounts to “dematerialization” of real life as it becomes a “spectral... Read More

Spectacular events — such as this weekend’s attempted assassination of President Trump and his Cabinet in Washington — can... Read More

Kanye West has been out of ideas for a long time now. This didn’t use to be a problem. On 2016’s The Life of... Read More

“I used to love to hear him talk,” a female friend said to me when I told her I was reviewing the Selected Letters of John... Read More

Andrew Martin’s characters tend to be overeducated and underemployed. Theoretically engaged in some kind of creative practice,... Read More

The year was 1845. At the time, the country of Denmark was experiencing a cultural renaissance of sorts. This “golden age”... Read More

It's hard to write a good oral history. The stop-start nature of the form makes it difficult to develop a narrative, and also the... Read More

Some might think it odd to speak of a “theology” of the Declaration. But we really can’t read it without one. Just consider... Read More

Does reading turn us into better people? Does it make us more sensitive and empathetic? Does it improve our judgment? And if it is not... Read More

Lena Dunham, the subject of a thousand 2010s think pieces about whether or not she is problematic, has re-emerged from behind the curtain... Read More

Two days after U.S. special forces rescued an American soldier from the depths of the Iranian mountains, an AI-generated film went... Read More

Lionel Shriver’s 2003 novel-turned-movie We Need to Talk About Kevin was a major prize-winner, a bestseller, and a hit,... Read More

In an incredible bit of engagement bait that I am absolutely falling for, this week the New York Times produced a roundtable... Read More

To many Americans, Jonathan Turley is an avuncular commentator who appears frequently on Fox News and other media outlets to discuss legal... Read More

In the legendary HBO series The Sopranos, a Hasidic Jew, being beaten for not paying up, refers to Masada, where a handful of Jewish... Read More

It was the late 90s and my mother was eating cottage cheese and canned pineapple. A year earlier, she had ended her grapefruit diet, where... Read More

The Nazis wasted no time in denouncing the artist Paul Klee (1879–1940). On February 1, 1933, less than a month after... Read More

When the sexual-abuse scandal involving Canadian literary legend Alice Munro broke in July 2024, a few months after the writer’s death,... Read More

Ross Barkan’s fourth novel, Colossus, is a thriller. Arriving only a year after his longer, panoramic New York story, Glass... Read More

In 2001, six-year-old Haley Zega got lost on a family hike in the Arkansas wilderness. She was found after three days where she survived... Read More

Bob Dylan and the Beatles were closer than even their most ardent fans may realize. The relationship between the American folk singer and the... Read More

I was kneeling at church, tracing the darkened grooves on the pew in front of me with my pinky finger. Above me, light poured through the... Read More

Among the fresh perplexities of our age is the recrudescence of what Thomas Mann defined as the “German problem”: a pact between... Read More

A friend and I went to see David Lee Roth at the local Spirit Mountain Indian Casino. I had never been to a Casino concert. I was curious to... Read More

One shouldn’t look to fiction for historical phenomenology, but I’m not sure of another art form better suited to communicating... Read More

I’m writing this in the south reading room of the New York Public Library on 42nd Street. Almost all the other occupants of this... Read More

In 1995, dozens of academics and intellectuals descended on Warwick University for the conference “Virtual Futures:... Read More

In 1936, eleven years after the underwhelming publication of The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald earned $80 total in book royalties... Read More

Once upon a time, I would make a beeline for the drinks if I arrived at a social event. I was a proud ‘chipper’ of cigarettes... Read More

For most of the past decade, Lena Dunham has been offline: no Instagram, no scrolling, with a trusted collaborator managing her... Read More

Working at a 24/7 bodega in the heart of Brooklyn, Tajuken Deli employees are prepared for almost anything – except having guns pointed... Read More

A somewhat under-the-radar decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit earlier this month is, on its surface, focused on the... Read More

We are on the verge of the age of human redundancy. In 2023, IBM’s chief executive told Bloomberg that soon some 7,800 roles might... Read More

Claude-Frédéric Bastiat, the 19th-century French economist and legislator, had a semi-famous essay titled “Ce qu’on... Read More

Let's start with the good news. Between January 2023 and May 2025, Fortune 100 companies reduced their use of the term "DEI" by ninety-eight... Read More

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” This leftist shibboleth, credited to author and... Read More