http://www.realclearscience.com/ en Copyright 2008 Fri, 17 May 2013 12:58:07 -0400 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.33 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Morning television, like other old line media institutions, has been knocked down a few pegs on the pop culture totem pole by the Internet age. But that doesn't make its workings any less interesting. The people we wake up to were always supposed to be idolized versions of ourselves -- not for nothing is the Today Show's cast called "America's First Family." A humanizing look at these stars and those who manage them -- which is what the New York Times's Brian Stelter gives us in Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV -- unravels that myth... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/05/14/how_operation_bambi_backfired_52.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/05/14/how_operation_bambi_backfired_52.html Rich Danker Rich Danker 2013/05 05/14/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 14 May 2013 04:03:03 -0400 Did alcohol ruin F. Scott Fitzgerald and his peers? And has the fact that writers don't booze as much these days produced better books than Fitzgerald's 1922 masterpiece The Great Gatsby, now a major motion picture? I would argue that the answer to both questions is yes. The Great Gatsby the film has already produced several think pieces about how Fitzgerald's gilded age mirrors our own (for my money the best was Nick Gillespie in Reason). But as interesting as the large socio-cultural questions is the role alcohol played for writers like Fitzgerald. Several years ago I came... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/05/02/how_alcohol_ruined_gatsby_51.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/05/02/how_alcohol_ruined_gatsby_51.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2013/05 05/02/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 14 May 2013 17:03:30 -0400 How can serious literature keep up with the storytelling of comic books? I have been reading The Woman Upstairs, the new novel by Claire Messud, one of my favorite writers. So far it's a somewhat interesting, if a bit slow, story about a woman who is full of resentment and wants more than anything else to me a famous artist. Messud wrote one of my favorite novels, The Emperor's Children, and hopefully The Woman Upstairs, which will be out shortly, will pick up and live up to that title. In the meantime, I keep getting distracted from The Woman Upstairs by Punk Rock Jesus. Punk Rock... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/04/30/ready_for_a_punk_rock_jesus_movie_50.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/04/30/ready_for_a_punk_rock_jesus_movie_50.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2013/04 04/30/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 30 Apr 2013 03:25:02 -0400 Many books decrying Big Government take the easy way out. They pretend that President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and various other demons have foisted burdensome regulations, unjust redistributions, and high taxes on the American people. We are not the problem, they are. W. James Antle III refuses to take the easy path in Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped? If you are skeptical of Big Government and tired of polemics, Antle is for you. Antle has a good background to write this book. He is a reporter working the DC beat whose writing appears in the American Spectator, the American... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/04/22/stuck_with_big_government_49.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/04/22/stuck_with_big_government_49.html John Samples John Samples 2013/04 04/22/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:56:04 -0400 Harlan Ellison is not in good health. Hard Case Crime, the neo-pulp Chicago publisher, has just reissued his first novel, 1958's Web of the City. When I contacted them for an interview I was told that it would not be possible due to Ellison's ongoing health problems. In 2012, Ellison, the author of over 50 book and a legendary science fiction and fantasy master, announced he was dying. No details were given, but shortly after that he did attend a science fiction conference. I can only hope Ellison gets better. He is one of the last remaining male novelists with a rampaging ego,... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/04/12/harlan_ellison_starry_egomaniac_48.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/04/12/harlan_ellison_starry_egomaniac_48.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2013/04 04/12/2013/00/00/00 Fri, 12 Apr 2013 20:51:24 -0400 And it's Ignatius by a nose. Since Pope Francis was elected March 13, there has been a breathless scramble by publishers to get anything by or about the pontiff into stores and onto Kindles. The first one out is Andrea Tornielli's Jorge Mario Bergoglio: Francis: Pope of a New World. It's published by Ignatius Press, the popular Catholic house that published most of the books by Pope Benedict XVI. Francis: Pope of a New World is exactly what you would expect of a book published by a respected house in two weeks: a serviceable primer that uses lengthy quotes from other sources.... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/04/03/the_first_pope_francis_book_47.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/04/03/the_first_pope_francis_book_47.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2013/04 04/03/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:54:43 -0400 If I start a book and after a few pages don't feel like going on, it's not my fault. It's the author's fault. Those words were once said to me at a party by a literate and book loving friend of mine, and they carried the force of genuine revelation. After years of required reading in school and you-have-to-read-this recommendations that fizzled, he had reached his limit. If a book didn't garb him pretty early, he was out. And it wasn't his fault. I'd like to apply this Simon Cowell strategy to some new spring books coming out. I recently received "Buzz... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/03/18/simon_cowell_guide_to_spring_books_46.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/03/18/simon_cowell_guide_to_spring_books_46.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2013/03 03/18/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 25 Mar 2013 13:41:07 -0400 Conservative journalism, which in many ways is stronger and better than it has ever been, is nonetheless missing something crucial. It is missing a literary voice. This became clear when I was reading Athwart History: Half a Century of Polemics, Animadversions, and Illuminations, a William F. Buckley omnibus that collects some of the late conservative icon's best writing. Reconnecting with Buckley's wonderful prose revealed something quite clearly: conservative journalism has plenty of pit bulls, but it lacks show dogs. It needs some graceful writers. Conservative journalists at... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/03/06/standing_athwart_breitbart_yelling_stop_45.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/03/06/standing_athwart_breitbart_yelling_stop_45.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2013/03 03/06/2013/00/00/00 Wed, 06 Mar 2013 04:00:09 -0500 Last summer, there were several occasions held to mark the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, which occurred on June 17, 1972. There were fetes of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters who were assigned the break in and traced it all the way back to the White House. Looking back four decades to that pivotal moment, journalism paused to pat itself on the back. Reading David Freddoso's new book, Spin Masters: How the Media Ignored the Real News and Helped Elect Barack Obama, it's possible, indeed likely, to feel that the symmetry of where the media is... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/02/23/our_nixonian_press_44.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/02/23/our_nixonian_press_44.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2013/02 02/23/2013/00/00/00 Sat, 23 Feb 2013 03:12:05 -0500 With the news that Pope Benedict is stepping down, Catholic journalists will be offering their thoughts over the next couple weeks. There will be a stark difference between those who have read Pope Benedict's books, and those who have not. This pope has left a record of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of words and it is astounding how many liberal Catholics have read none of them. For a so-called Catholic pundit to talk about the pope and his place in history without having read a single word of the more than 50 books the Holy Father has written is like someone covering the... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/02/12/how_not_to_cover_the_pope_43.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/02/12/how_not_to_cover_the_pope_43.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2013/02 02/12/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:37:16 -0500 Would someone please stand athwart the empty hype machine that is Beyonce and yell, Stop!? The entertainment media is in dire need of a new version of Punk magazine. Punk was an underground magazine that ran for 16 issues in the mid 1970s. It was created by cartoonist John Holmstrom, writer "Legs" McNeil, and publisher Ged Dunn. It Books, a division of HarperCollins, recently published a big and beautiful retrospective, Punk: The Best of Punk Magazine. Immersing yourself in the street art, slapstick comics, and sheer sense of fun of the reproduced back issues, you become... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/02/09/time_to_punk_beyonce_42.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/02/09/time_to_punk_beyonce_42.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2013/02 02/09/2013/00/00/00 Sat, 09 Feb 2013 04:19:29 -0500 At the recent March for Life in Washington, the National Shrine had several book authors do signings. The most popular author by far was Regina Doman. Her hit was Habemus Papam!, a manga-style graphic novel about the life of Joseph Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict XVI. Comic fanboys will point out the differences between manga and American comic art. In manga, the eyes are bigger and the action sequences more angular and kinetic. (And purist manga reads not from left to right, but right to left.) Yet what struck me about Doman's book on the pope was how much like an American comic it is.... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/01/31/pope_benedict_vs_the_x-men_41.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/01/31/pope_benedict_vs_the_x-men_41.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2013/01 01/31/2013/00/00/00 Thu, 31 Jan 2013 21:08:39 -0500 Every summer I teach a journalism course at a university in Washington, D.C. The first rule I always tell students is: when writing, get to the point quickly. When I was starting out as a journalist many years ago an editor at the Washington Post told me the same thing. If you haven't gotten to the point by the third paragraph, he said, it's over. Or as James Wolcott once put it: "Avoid preamble -- flip the on switch in the first sentence. Find a focal point for your nervous energy, assume a forward offensive stance, and drive to the finish line, even if it's only a... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/01/22/on_getting_to_the_point_40.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/01/22/on_getting_to_the_point_40.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2013/01 01/22/2013/00/00/00 Tue, 22 Jan 2013 13:00:34 -0500 Five years ago, on a quiet, leisurely Thursday night, my husband and I sat at the dining room table with a yellow notepad, discussing when we should start having kids. "See, here's how it works," he said, drawing a graph. "With a dog, you put in a medium amount of work, and you get a medium amount of reward. If you were to, say, purchase a lion, you'd put in a lot of work, but you'd get pretty much no reward - and you might even get eaten. Horrible deal." He paused, drawing a straight line that hit each point directly between the axes. "See? With... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/01/14/when_babies_disappear_39.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/01/14/when_babies_disappear_39.html Heather Wilhelm Heather Wilhelm 2013/01 01/14/2013/00/00/00 Mon, 14 Jan 2013 04:46:00 -0500 Django Unchained, the new film by Quentin Tarantino, shares a lot in common with Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And no, I'm not talking about the n-word. Both are potential masterpieces that almost ruin themselves by an inexplicable, tragic collapse in the third act. The similarities are quite striking. I was an English major in college, and I remember spending several days in a seminar pondering how, with Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain had written three-fourths of a masterpiece, and one-fourth meandering mess. It isn't simply that the book drops off in quality;... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/01/11/django_should_have_learned_from_huck_finn_38.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2013/01/11/django_should_have_learned_from_huck_finn_38.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2013/01 01/11/2013/00/00/00 Fri, 11 Jan 2013 02:25:19 -0500 Magazines have life cycles. That was said several years ago by a journalist in reference to the New Yorker, which had entered an uncertain period in the 1990s when Tina Brown took over as editor. Magazines, the man said, have lives -- they are born, they live, they die. It turned out that it wasn't the New Yorker's time. Tina Brown left in 1998 and was replaced by David Remnick, who had brought the magazine back by going back to the standards that once made it great: long, well reported stories on interesting subjects and salient criticism of the current arts scene. Newspapers also... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/12/18/washington_post_boring_itself_to_death_37.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/12/18/washington_post_boring_itself_to_death_37.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2012/12 12/18/2012/00/00/00 Tue, 18 Dec 2012 22:53:25 -0500 Christianity is the religion of desire. It is the religion that redeems eros, the yearning for love, into Eros, God's love for us. This is the theme of Fill These Hearts: God, Sex, and the Universal Longing, a wise, beautiful, and perhaps revolutionary book by Christopher West. West is an expert in the Theology of the Body, the remarkable series of lectures about human sexuality given in1985 by Pope John Paul II about human sexuality. West starts with an obvious but important observation: human beings are creatures of desire. We are filled with passion and longing. This is how God made... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/12/12/the_religion_of_desire_36.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/12/12/the_religion_of_desire_36.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2012/12 12/12/2012/00/00/00 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 04:13:53 -0500 The Party Line, a new play by Sheryl Longin and Roger L. Simon, is a missed opportunity. Just published by Criterion Books, the play adumbrates the lives of journalists who excused away communist crimes in the mid-20th century, as well as their modern-day offspring. The most famous of the characters is Walter Duranty, the New York Times reporter who covered up mass starvation in the Soviet Union under Stalin. In The Party Line, Duranty is not painted in broad strokes, but, like the other characters, in crayon. Konstantin Oumansky, the director of the Soviet Press Office, is right out of a... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/12/01/dont_play_it_again_sam_35.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/12/01/dont_play_it_again_sam_35.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2012/12 12/01/2012/00/00/00 Sat, 01 Dec 2012 05:49:05 -0500 What America lost in President Obama's victory on the recent election goes deeper than politics and party. What was lost is something transcendent and vital to a healthy concept of the human person. I fully realized this when I came across a grand passage from the new book Wounds That Will Never Heal: Affirmative Action and Our Continuing Racial Divide by Russell Nieli. Nieli specifically explores personalism, which has been an important component of philosophy since Socrates and was a central part of the work of Pope John Paul II. Nieli explains it well: "According to the... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/11/14/soledad_obrien_has_nothing_to_say_34.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/11/14/soledad_obrien_has_nothing_to_say_34.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2012/11 11/14/2012/00/00/00 Wed, 14 Nov 2012 03:25:20 -0500 Where are the girls? Where are the drugs? That's what I kept wondering as I plodded through My Sisters the Saints: A Spiritual Memoir by Colleen Carroll Campbell. Campbell is a Catholic journalist and television host. She has written a very boring memoir. Reading it, I kept thinking of something I heard a rock and roll musician say in a club once. Two male members of his band, the singer and the drummer, had fallen in love and were in the bathroom having a quarrel. The musician ruefully shook his head. "This isn't why I joined a band," he said. "Where are the girls?... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/11/03/the_tracy_flick_of_catholicism__33.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/11/03/the_tracy_flick_of_catholicism__33.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2012/11 11/03/2012/00/00/00 Sat, 03 Nov 2012 03:48:36 -0400 It was standing room only at the Catholic Information Center three weeks ago for the publication party of Breaking Through: Catholic Women Speak for Themselves, a collection of essays by Catholic women and edited by Helen Alvare. Alvare is a brilliant woman and a writer of graceful precision, and the book is worth its price for her essay "Fear of Children." It always amazes me that detractors profile Catholics as people living stunted lives in some kind of fantasyland, when it is thinkers such as Alvare who repeatedly show the courage to strike at the heart of questions about human... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/10/22/the_war_on_the_war_on_women_32.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/10/22/the_war_on_the_war_on_women_32.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2012/10 10/22/2012/00/00/00 Mon, 22 Oct 2012 04:46:31 -0400 "The conservative book market is saturated," a conservative editor recently told me. He's responsible for many right-wing bestsellers, so probably knows what he is talking about. Ann Coulter is claiming that her new book Mugged is being blackballed by the mainstream media, but the truth is probably that people, including not a few conservatives, have just grown tired of the arguments. Mind you, they agree with the arguments. They just don't need to hear them yet again. The problems with liberalism have become so obvious, and indeed so immediately dangerous, that people... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/10/12/the_end_of_conservative_nonfiction_31.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/10/12/the_end_of_conservative_nonfiction_31.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2012/10 10/12/2012/00/00/00 Fri, 12 Oct 2012 03:21:03 -0400 It seems John Kerry has lost, again. It was Kerry's job to prepare the President for his first debate with Governor Mitt Romney on Wednesday, but judging from the President's performance, Karen Lewis stole the show. Though the President of the Chicago Teachers Union was never mentioned by name, Lewis's interests commanded Barack Obama's attention throughout the night. Obama opened his plea for another term with a promise to "invest in education and training" by hiring "another 100,000 new math and science teachers." While there was much ado about taxes,... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/10/05/an_unfair_share.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/10/05/an_unfair_share.html Nicholas G. Hahn III Nicholas G. Hahn III 2012/10 10/05/2012/00/00/00 Fri, 05 Oct 2012 02:19:00 -0400 What were they thinking? That's the only rational reaction to the news that Penguin publishers was paying Ana Marie Cox $81,250 for a book on "a humorous examination of the next generation of political activists." Actually, Penguin's final price for the book was $325,000. The $81,250 was the advance, paid up front to encourage Cox to finish the book. It's been a few years and Cox has not finished the book, and now Penguin is suing to get their advance back, plus $50,000 in interest. But honestly, what the hell was Penguin thinking? Cox became a political analyst... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/10/03/give_me_ana_marie_coxs_contract_29.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/10/03/give_me_ana_marie_coxs_contract_29.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2012/10 10/03/2012/00/00/00 Thu, 04 Oct 2012 15:41:45 -0400 In the end, all I had left were my Hard Case Crime books. I should have seen it coming. I should have been smarter. But I was a sucker. A sucker for a pretty face and the promise of hope and change. I was working in a bar when I met her. I had just gotten back from the war. The therapy and the medicine were helping me cope. Then I met... her. I was bartending in Washington, D.C., where I had settled after I got back from Afghanistan. Things were going good. I was making some good tips, and was freelancing for the book section of the Washington Examiner. My speciality was crime. Jim... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/09/27/obamas_pulp_fiction_america_28.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/09/27/obamas_pulp_fiction_america_28.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2012/09 09/27/2012/00/00/00 Thu, 27 Sep 2012 02:49:35 -0400 I recently attended the Small Press Expo, an annual Bethesda, Maryland showcase for independent comic book creators. After perusing thousands of comics -- everything from Chris Ware's remarkably grand Building Stories to the elegant work of Daniel Clowes and Adrian Tomine to handmade black and white zines stapled together -- I can announce my own winner for the most impressive book: My Friend Dahmer, by a great cartoonist named Derf Backderf. I was not prepared for how completely I would by absorbed by My Friend Dahmer, which recounts author Backderf's high school friendship with... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/09/20/my_friend_the_cannibal_27.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/09/20/my_friend_the_cannibal_27.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2012/09 09/20/2012/00/00/00 Thu, 04 Oct 2012 15:39:31 -0400 James Wolcott is right. In his new Kindle Single The Gore Supremacy, Wolcott argues that with the recent death of Gore Vidal, American punditry and letters have entered a new era. The intellectual giants of both left and right have been routed by pygmies. Wolcott's extended essay is about Gore Vidal, the great American writer who recently passed away at 86. Wolcott argues that with the passing of Vidal, American literature and journalism has been left in the the unoriginal hands of bloggers and wordy, writing-workshop soundalikes. Wolcott lists the major writers who passed away this... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/09/11/invasion_of_the_literary_pygmies_26.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/09/11/invasion_of_the_literary_pygmies_26.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2012/09 09/11/2012/00/00/00 Tue, 11 Sep 2012 05:38:34 -0400 If anyone reading this is going to be in the Washington, D.C. area the weekend of September 15, try and make it to the annual Small Press Expo. It's like the San Diego Comic Con, except smaller and for independent comic book publishers. If you like graphic novels, hand-crafted flip books and independent comics on every conceivable subject, you should try and be there. We are, of course, far past the idea that comics are for kids. This is not only due to people like Robert Downey, Jr., and Christopher Nolan, but even more sophisticated artists like Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware and Adrian... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/09/06/come_see_me_at_the_small_press_expo_25.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/09/06/come_see_me_at_the_small_press_expo_25.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2012/09 09/06/2012/00/00/00 Thu, 06 Sep 2012 03:48:55 -0400 Can we please stop calling journalists brilliant? It's a cultural grade inflation that has become epidemic and needs to stop. Rachel Maddow, a hectoring ideologue, goes on David Letterman and is called "the smartest person in the world." Maureen Dowd pens some imbecilic singsongy column, and Howard Kurtz expressed disappointment that someone of her "intelligence" would do such a thing. To Chris Matthews, anyone who diagnoses the craziness of the conservatives is "just a brilliant, brilliant person." At this rate Ed Shultz will win the Nobel Prize for... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/08/28/hl_mencken_against_the_journalists_24.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/08/28/hl_mencken_against_the_journalists_24.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2012/08 08/28/2012/00/00/00 Tue, 28 Aug 2012 02:47:40 -0400 Orbis books has just issued a third printing of the small volume The Selfless Way of Christ: Downward Mobility and the Spiritual Life, by Henri Nouwen. It's an encouraging sign that there appears to be some demand for this book. There are a few people out there who think there may be some spiritual lessons to be gained living in recessionary, "new normal" Obama America. But it may be too little, too late. Christianity has failed in America. It becomes obvious when you step back an observe the big picture. And The Selfless Way of Christ, which is less a book than an essay with... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/08/23/the_void_where_god_once_was_23.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/08/23/the_void_where_god_once_was_23.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2012/08 08/23/2012/00/00/00 Thu, 23 Aug 2012 02:02:09 -0400 Are women taking over the world? According to The End of Men, an upcoming book by Atlantic editor Hanna Rosin, they're getting pretty close -- and in many cases, they're leaving their men behind. Today, The End of Men reports, women earn almost 60 percent of all bachelor's degrees, hold more than half of all managerial and professional jobs, and are soaring in the ranks of medical, law, and business schools. Forty years ago, American women brought in 2 to 6 percent of their family's income; now the average is 42 percent. One out of two girls now participates in sports,... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/08/21/dont_call_this_empowerment_22.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/08/21/dont_call_this_empowerment_22.html Heather Wilhelm Heather Wilhelm 2012/08 08/21/2012/00/00/00 Wed, 22 Aug 2012 10:08:24 -0400 Two of the greatest magazines in America, The New Criterion and Maximum Rocknroll, are each celebrating thirty years of publishing this year. While the two magazines might seem totally different, they actually have quite a bit in common. The most important is that they both claim to preach the truth -- and on that score, they are both right. The New Criterion is the highbrow conservative monthly edited by Roger Kimball. It has a graceful modernist design with no pictures, and covers politics, museums, books, music, poetry, media and art. Typical sentence: "The law; the economy; the... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/08/14/why_the_new_criterion_should_rock_21.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/08/14/why_the_new_criterion_should_rock_21.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2012/08 08/14/2012/00/00/00 Tue, 14 Aug 2012 16:21:19 -0400 I love Kindle Singles, those mini-books published by Amazon. These are works that are too long for a magazine yet too short for a book. You download one for a couple bucks, and can get a terrific read in an afternoon. They have proven that many books are too long -- indeed are just padded-out magazine articles. And yet The Summer of 43: R.A. Dickey's Knuckleball and the Redemption of America's Game, the new bestselling Kindle Single by Joseph Bottum, is too short. But before getting into the details, a couple disclaimers: I'm an acquaintance of Joseph Bottum's. I'm... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/07/30/my_grandfather_belongs_in_the_baseball_hall_of_fame_20.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/07/30/my_grandfather_belongs_in_the_baseball_hall_of_fame_20.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2012/07 07/30/2012/00/00/00 Mon, 30 Jul 2012 03:36:47 -0400 If I had to compare Barack Obama to literary characters, I would pick two: Forrest Gump and John Fitzgerald Adams, the protagonist in Charles McCarry's prescient and overlooked 1998 novel Lucky Bastard. In Forrest Gump, the novel by Winston Groom that was made into a movie, the lead character is someone who simply receives his worldview early in life and never changes his mind about anything. He's is a geyser of learned cliches. In Lucky Bastard, John Fitzgerald Adams, the president (and illegitimate son of JFK), is recruited by Marxists and is an actual communist. Obama is a kind... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/07/22/barack_obamas_revolutionary_idiocy_19.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/07/22/barack_obamas_revolutionary_idiocy_19.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2012/07 07/22/2012/00/00/00 Sun, 22 Jul 2012 12:20:15 -0400 Last Saturday night, a wild-eyed, t-shirt clad teenager screamed at me for riding on a boat. I won't print exactly what he said, but it was a pretty creative string of expletives. Here's the gist: It was not fair that my family and I were on a boat in the Chicago River, cruising out to see some fireworks, while he and his friends were stuck schlepping above us on the Michigan Avenue bridge. We were, according to his shouted analysis, "rich you-know-what-holes." We had "our you-know-whats stuck up our you-know-whats." We could also proceed, he screeched in a... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/07/17/rich_people_problems_18.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/07/17/rich_people_problems_18.html Heather Wilhelm Heather Wilhelm 2012/07 07/17/2012/00/00/00 Tue, 17 Jul 2012 21:22:41 -0400 How sad. How sad and how terribly dull. Anne Rice has returned to the porn business. The erstwhile Catholic and author of the first second-wave vampire novels in the 1970s and 1980s, Rice has republished the Sleeping Beauty trilogy, three books full of repetitive sex, spanking, and S & M. They are based on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. It's pure crap, a quickie cash-in based on the 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon, and Rice ought to be ashamed of herself. The three books, The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty's Punishment, and Beauty's Release, first came out in the... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/07/17/anne_rice_returns_to_porn_17.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/07/17/anne_rice_returns_to_porn_17.html Mark Judge Mark Judge 2012/07 07/17/2012/00/00/00 Tue, 17 Jul 2012 07:38:33 -0400 In an earlier era, Americans had fewer television options and it was easier for one person to develop into a national broadcast news icon. For much of the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, Walter Cronkite was such a person. With his avuncular and amiable style, Cronkite proved to be a reassuring presence on CBS News during a tumultuous period both at home and abroad. He was nicknamed Uncle Walter and polls showed him to be the most trusted man in America. Cronkite, who left the anchor chair in 1981 and died in 2009, hadn't been the subject of a full-scale biography until Rice University... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/06/08/seeing_uncle_walter_every_night_16.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/06/08/seeing_uncle_walter_every_night_16.html Claude R. Marx Claude R. Marx 2012/06 06/08/2012/00/00/00 Fri, 08 Jun 2012 21:38:07 -0400 Often when one is about to read the umpteenth biography of a prominent figure there is the temptation to think of the phrase "everything that can be said has been, though not everyone has said it.'' That's definitely not the case with the fourth volume (out of a projected five) of Robert A. Caro's brilliant, if at times overwritten, biography of Lyndon Johnson. The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, which covers Johnson's life from 1958 to mid-1964, depicts him as a powerful Senate majority leader transformed into a powerless vice president who was... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/05/18/robert_caros_fix_for_political_junkies_15.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/05/18/robert_caros_fix_for_political_junkies_15.html Claude R. Marx Claude R. Marx 2012/05 05/18/2012/00/00/00 Fri, 18 May 2012 04:53:24 -0400 Brian Doherty aside, most reporters don't know what to make of Ron Paul. This observation isn't simply a clichéd swipe at the "drive-by media" or the dinosaurs of the dreaded "MSM." To the working press, from the Red Bull-addled gumshoes at Internet start-ups to grizzled veterans of the campaign trail, Paul's two Republican presidential bids simply do not compute. This only partly due to liberal bias, the smothering conventional wisdom that sees no practical difference between restoring the Constitution and returning the powdered wig to its proper... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/05/03/finally_a_journalist_who_gets_ron_paul_14.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/05/03/finally_a_journalist_who_gets_ron_paul_14.html W. James Antle III W. James Antle III 2012/05 05/03/2012/00/00/00 Thu, 03 May 2012 22:22:53 -0400 Fourteen years ago this week, Pocket Books released the seventh edition of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care. The date, May 2, 1998, would have been Benjamin Spock’s 95th birthday, but the famous pediatrician – infamous in some quarters –had died six weeks earlier. It was a long and productive life Benny Spock enjoyed, and despite what his critics claimed, it was a life that benefited millions of families around the world. The original title of his book, first published in 1946, was The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, and it really was... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/05/02/dr_spocks_great_advice__questionable_politics_13.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/05/02/dr_spocks_great_advice__questionable_politics_13.html Carl M. Cannon Carl M. Cannon 2012/05 05/02/2012/00/00/00 Wed, 02 May 2012 23:00:06 -0400 Are Republicans genetically inferior to Democrats? That might sound like a preposterous question, but essentially that is the thesis of Chris Mooney's latest book The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science -- and Reality. In a recent article, Mooney summarizes his case. "[I]t often seems there are so many factually wrong claims on the political right that those who make them live in a different reality." He continues, "So here's an idea: Maybe they actually do. And maybe we can look to science itself...to help understand why it is that they view the... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/04/26/are_republicans_genetically_inferior_12.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/04/26/are_republicans_genetically_inferior_12.html Alex Berezow & Hank Campbell Alex Berezow & Hank Campbell 2012/04 04/26/2012/00/00/00 Thu, 26 Apr 2012 03:02:27 -0400 "Americans really need to ask themselves a question," Grover Norquist and John Lott write in their brief manifesto Debacle: Obama's War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future. "Have people really noticed their lives so greatly improved by the increased government spending that it is worth all this new debt? For example, cutting back the 2012 budget to what was spent in 2008 would leave the deficit at a few hundred billion dollars, instead of more than $1.1 trillion." That is a good question. And as Norquist and Lott point out, this surge in... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/04/09/hold_back_the_baby_boom_hordes_11.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/04/09/hold_back_the_baby_boom_hordes_11.html Robert VerBruggen Robert VerBruggen 2012/04 04/09/2012/00/00/00 Mon, 09 Apr 2012 13:07:17 -0400 More than a hundred persons have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the world's most coveted award, and Jay Nordlinger says something interesting about all of them in the new history Peace, They Say (Encounter Books, 459 pages, $27.99). Nordlinger, a senior editor of National Review, has an agreeable writing style. Although he has strong and at times iconoclastic opinions, he doesn't beat you over the head with them. An opening chapter offers an intriguing mini-biography of Alfred Nobel and explains how he came to create the prizes named after him. Nordlinger demolishes various myths... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/04/03/blessed_are_the_nobel_prize_winners_10.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/04/03/blessed_are_the_nobel_prize_winners_10.html Lou Cannon Lou Cannon 2012/04 04/03/2012/00/00/00 Tue, 03 Apr 2012 01:22:27 -0400 It doesn't seem possible, because she's still so young-looking and svelte, but Barbie turned 53 years old Friday. The star of Mattel Toys made her debut on March 9, 1959, at the American Toy Fair in New York City. The folks at Mattel gave Barbie a full name (Barbie Millicent Roberts), a fictional hometown (Willows, Wisconsin) and a boyfriend (Ken, who first appeared in 1961), but it was always Barbie herself -- along with those endless outfits -- that held American girls in such thrall. Five decades later, some 800 million Barbies have been sold here and around the world. Anyone... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/03/12/youve_come_a_long_way_barbie_9.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/03/12/youve_come_a_long_way_barbie_9.html Carl M. Cannon Carl M. Cannon 2012/03 03/12/2012/00/00/00 Mon, 12 Mar 2012 02:45:17 -0400 Americans, the saying goes, don't like to talk about class -- but they certainly enjoy reading about it. They also love to see how they stack up against their peers. One of the most notorious and snobby books on the topic, Paul Fussell's Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, capitalizes on this repressed American passion with its "Living Room Scale," which measures social class based on your décor. A worn Oriental rug will earn you eight points; a new one (and, by extension, new money) will lower your score. A ceiling 10 feet or higher is good;... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/02/02/mitt_romney_meet_charles_murray_8.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/02/02/mitt_romney_meet_charles_murray_8.html Heather Wilhelm Heather Wilhelm 2012/02 02/02/2012/00/00/00 Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:29:28 -0500 It doesn't take much to these days to get labeled a "provocateur." Back in the good old days, you had to really work to cause a sensation -- or at the very least, dance on TV with a little too much pop in your pelvis. Once the ante had been upped, you had to get up on stage in Des Moines and bite off the head of a bat in a drug-addled concert haze. But that was all before the rise of Caitlin Flanagan: mother, Atlantic contributor, and established expert in making certain women's heads explode. Flanagan's secret is simple: She says old-fashioned things. Her first... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/01/25/nasty_brutish_and_short_skirts_7.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/01/25/nasty_brutish_and_short_skirts_7.html Heather Wilhelm Heather Wilhelm 2012/01 01/25/2012/00/00/00 Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:10:03 -0500 Editor's note: In advance of President Obama's State of the Union address next week, RCP is rolling out daily "state of" reports to better frame the issues facing the nation. Today: The state of American books. Rarely has it felt so awkward, so nostalgic, or so generally beside the point to speak of such a thing as the American literary scene, let alone to render some fixed assessment of its "state." In our post-meltdown new millennium, literary expression seems to have embraced a self-conscious role as lifestyle ornament, offering imaginary retreats from the... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/01/21/the_state_of_books_in_america_6.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2012/01/21/the_state_of_books_in_america_6.html Chris Lehmann Chris Lehmann 2012/01 01/21/2012/00/00/00 Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:04:17 -0500 Sit on a bench on the Thompson Hall lawn -- the "green" at the University of New Hampshire -- and watch the students walk past. Scattered among legions of women you may sight the occasional male. Observe his attire, and you will likely see a discordant trifecta: Timberland work boots, sweatpants and a backpack. Is he headed to the field and manual labor, to his dorm room for a Donkey Kong marathon, or is he shooting towards a professional career? We're told to dress for the job we want. If their dress is any indication, these young men reply firmly, "I don't... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2011/12/11/women_on_top_men_at_the_bottom_5.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2011/12/11/women_on_top_men_at_the_bottom_5.html Philip Brand Philip Brand 2011/12 12/11/2011/00/00/00 Sun, 11 Dec 2011 23:27:17 -0500 On March 25, 1965, after the bloody and contentious marches from Selma to Montgomery, Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol building and called Alabama "a shining moment in the conscience of man." Shining, because Alabama was both home to "the colossus of segregation" and home to the nonviolent struggle to dismantle it. "Alabama has tried to nurture and defend evil, but evil is choking to death in the dusty roads and streets of this state," he said. King's words in front of the Alabama State Capitol building have been evoked... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2011/10/25/whats_behind_the_new_juan_crow_laws_4.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2011/10/25/whats_behind_the_new_juan_crow_laws_4.html Ananda Rose Ananda Rose 2011/10 10/25/2011/00/00/00 Tue, 25 Oct 2011 23:00:09 -0400 Joe McGinnis is billed as the author of The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin but in actuality he, not Palin, is the book's main character. The opening line of his expose on the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee? "I moved in next door to Sarah Palin today." Throughout the book, we are served generous helpings of what McGinnis saw, how he feels, what he ate for lunch. (A local Thai restaurant receives a negative review, but the king salmon a source feeds him for dinner is so good you would to have to stomp on it "in a manure pit... http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2011/09/29/the_book_sarah_palin_need_not_fear_3.html http://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2011/09/29/the_book_sarah_palin_need_not_fear_3.html W. James Antle III W. James Antle III 2011/09 09/29/2011/00/00/00 Fri, 30 Sep 2011 12:26:11 -0400