RealClearBooks - Book News, Book Reviews, Publishing Industry Aggregator

‘The coin don’t have no say. It’s just you,” Carla Jean Moss says to the psychopathic killer Anton Chigurh. He... Read More

Twenty-three hundred years ago, the legend goes, King Ptolemy I of Egypt asked his court adviser to assemble a comprehensive collection of... Read More

Once we had ventured far enough into America to no longer be anywhere near the mood-lit wine bars and overrun coffee shops of North Brooklyn,... Read More

Julius Evola died in Rome in 1974, and has since become one of the most important thinkers of the global radical right. T-shirts bearing his... Read More

If my father caught me drinking water in his presence, he’d call me a “water boy” and ride me without mercy. Read More

The CNN host that afternoon in 1990 expected a debate, not a fistfight. On one side was John Frohnmayer, chairman of the National Endowment... Read More

In the 102nd minute of his team’s epic World Cup match against soccer powerhouse Argentina, with viewers around the globe hanging on... Read More

On our second day in Tampa, we went to the beach. I love Miami beaches, but the water on the west coast of this state is just better. Clear... Read More

Toward the end of “Lake Effect,” the new novel by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, Clara Larkin recounts at a dinner party the... Read More

Since its release on May 25, the disparate critical responses of Pope Leo’s encyclical on artificial intelligence, Magnifica humanitas,... Read More

It’s not often an article pops up on the computer that impacts me as personally as “My Relationship with... Read More

America is in a time of God. America has always been in a time of God. Lost somewhere between eternity and Jetztzeit, Americans are haunted... Read More

Ever since the Constitution was written the issue of libel has generated problems. The Founders were fully aware of the inherent tension... Read More

My neighbor, a kind elderly Jewish woman with a Jack Russell Terrier named Fauci, knocked on our door last week, offering an American flag... Read More

In his 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe lampooned 1980s New York City—including its rampant street crime,... Read More

It’s strange to think that Jamie Muscato fell into musical theater. “I never really wanted to do it,” the British actor... Read More

The Iran war is the theater for the most expansive use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms to date. Some have even called it the... Read More

Few documents have been scrutinized more than our Declaration of Independence, with particular attention lavished on the truth that all men... Read More

In this World Cup-crazed summer, the timing of a Manhattan retrospective on Italian historical cinema has felt at times like a sly joke about... Read More

The year 2011 saw the release of two movies — one, an auteurist masterpiece by Lars von Trier starring Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte... Read More

My first celebrity crush was not a traditional heartthrob, like Twilight star Taylor Lautner, or a pop star like Jesse McCartney, or any of... Read More

Every nation sustains itself with mythmaking. This is why Augustus commissioned Virgil to write The Aeneid at the moment the emperor was... Read More

Already, there are things I know I would change if I could. So much of it is just time. Then, there’s the weather. For the better part... Read More

There’s a new Criterion Channel series called “Odysseys” that is clearly meant as a tie-in with Christopher Nolan’s... Read More

It is fairly well known that a certain Greek and Latin professor named Maurice Schérer, born in Tulle in 1920, was also the iconic... Read More

Interviewing Rachel Aviv is a great way to source reading recommendations. The exacting essayist responds to my questions about her new book... Read More

Why Jay-Z? Out of every rapper, from Brooklyn to Compton, why did Shawn Carter emerge as the platonic ideal of the hip-hop superstar, an icon... Read More

Anyone who pays attention to such things knows that technology has become increasingly oppressive, just as it has lost interest in... Read More

THE ESSAYS IN Rachel Aviv’s fantastic new book, You Won’t Get Free of It: Stories of Mothers and Daughters, are expanded and... Read More

I. Faculty and Object What follows is a reflection on theōria (contemplation) and the reality of form. In more general terms, I want to... Read More

In 2022, U.K. tech company Stability AI released Stable Diffusion, a text-to-image generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) model. Its... Read More

In 1775, a Harvard professor named Edward Wigglesworth sat down and did some math. The American colonies were doubling in population every 20... Read More

In the early 2010s, many of pop culture’s female heroines were known for a type of cool aloofness. Usually associated with an... Read More

When I tell my friends that I am reading N+1, they all say the same thing: it’s not what it used to be. Most of you, my readers, have... Read More

The era of social media addiction litigation is upon us. In a case heard this March, a Los Angeles jury decided against Meta (the parent... Read More

The Chateau Marmont, Hollywood’s supposedly hottest hangout, was dead. It was pushing 9:00 p.m., and I’d been standing by the... Read More

“Works of art are of an infinite solitude,” Rainer Maria Rilke writes in Letters to a Young Poet, “and no means of approach... Read More

In 1949 Toni Morrison left Ohio. Aside from a brief stint in the ‘60s, she never lived there again. Yet Morrison remained invested in... Read More