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He was, by that point, settled into his middle-aged frame: not so much stout as softly rounded off, a slow gravitational sag sloping all his... Read More

On September 1, 1659, the English son of a Bremen merchant sails north out of Brazil on a slaving expedition. He follows the coast thirty... Read More

Oh, to live in a room filled with the objects described by Katherine Mansfield. To arrange her combs, playing cards, and enamel boxes, to try... Read More

I’m certainly not the first person to remark upon this, but the chief moral fable of the United States—young George Washington... Read More

RECEIVED A TEXT MESSAGE from my editor: “Um, is it unethical to ask you to get an AI bf?? You can prob say no.” Resentment.... Read More

Teachable. The biggest compliment a college professor can give to a book or a movie is to say that it’s “teachable.” Over... Read More

One of poetry’s great pleasures is the associative feeling a body of work evokes in the mind of the reader. Oeuvres become little... Read More

I never knew Gordon Wood well, or at all. During college, I was assigned The Radicalism of the American Revolution in an entry-level history... Read More

On a December afternoon at Ford Field, with the Steelers’ season hanging on every snap, the oldest player in the NFL hustled to the... Read More

Back in November, the State Department warned that “mass migration poses an existential threat to western civilization and undermines... Read More

Alexander Zverev has finally won a “major” tennis tournament, this year’s French Open. This means that I have also won an... Read More

Concealed carry is becoming increasingly common across America. A new survey commissioned by the Crime Prevention Research Center finds that... Read More

The Sick Child by Edvard Munch is undoubtedly a highlight of Norwegian painting, still compelling and touching, still unsurpassed. The odd... Read More

One of my favorite reading experiences of my life was Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. I read it in the months between... Read More

How much do you have to suffer to be a great athlete? Do you have to suffer like Johnny Unitas, the great quarterback of the 1960s, who was... Read More

Last month, Pope Leo XIV presented the papal encyclical Magnifica humanitas, laying out the Catholic Church’s definitive response to... Read More

RealClear is vacationing in London this June, and we invite you to join us. When? June 23-25. Read More

“His stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree…” — Bob Dylan on John... Read More

In 1986, Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) contended: “America, with its vast space … is the only remaining primitive... Read More

It would be tempting to put Naomi Kanakia’s new book on the crowded shelf of recent works that have sought to defend the importance of... Read More

We live in an unprecedented moment for booksmaxxing. I don’t know how I could otherwise make my way through authors like Hannah Arendt... Read More

Anthropic is regarded as a giant among AI companies, but perhaps what it really excels in is anthropomorphism. Earlier this year, the company... Read More

1. One of the loveliest documented moments of the 1966 Newport Folk Festival features Bukka White and Howlin’ Wolf in a rare improvised... Read More

In my obituary for the great Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, who died last year, I cited Fredric Jameson’s controversial 1986... Read More

You cannot bring a phone into the surprise Phoebe Bridgers show on June 4 at Madison Square Garden. You cannot bring digital recorders,... Read More

Mark Helprin’s Elegy in Blue is witty, wise, and funny. Read More

I have never met Harvey Mansfield, the distinguished scholar and Harvard University Professor of Government, Emeritus, but he strikes me as... Read More

When Mallory received her first “school supplies” email, she was thrilled. As a kid, she loved the trip to the store for pencils,... Read More

Imagine, if you will, the worst possible teenager, like the teenager from hell. Read More

Because Rafael Nadal has been a beloved and respected icon of tennis for so many years now, part of the pantheon of the sport, it’s... Read More

When OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022, it quickly broke records as the fastest growing technology product in history. AI model providers... Read More

I write this from the hospital—where my third child has just been born safe and sound—to give a secular and scientific read of... Read More

A while back I taught an undergraduate course, at intervals over a ten-year period, in “literary journalism,” which I got to... Read More