RealClearBooks - Book News, Book Reviews, Publishing Industry Aggregator

There is probably no more respected or prominent compassionate social critic of millennials and Gen Z than Dr. Jonathan Haidt. Since his... Read More

DAVID ROONEY: We’re nearing the middle of one of the most contentious election years in America’s history, with bitter... Read More

Bitter Water Opera, the debut novel by the American writer Nicolette Polek, begins with the invocation of a muse. Gia, the narrator, is... Read More

Over the past two centuries, women have sought and attained equal social, legal, and political status. Detractors have opposed these... Read More

It was just after 3 am on a Saturday night in South Philadelphia, and I was watching an angry inflatable chicken fight a Japanese otter... Read More

Frederick Douglass described in his famous memoir how, when his master discovered his wife teaching their young slave Frederick to read, he... Read More

“There are different categories of fancy Mexican,” says one character in Nicolás Medina Mora’s debut novel,... Read More

“Growing up precocious sometimes means not growing up at all,” Taylor Swift sings on “But Daddy I Love Him.”... Read More

My new book, Reboot, is a fundamentally unserious novel that takes a few things far too seriously. Depending how you reckon, writing it... Read More

Think back to the United States as it was a year ago, a decade ago, a generation ago. Is the US a more caring or less caring nation now than... Read More

Allow me to impart some important life advice: Do not divorce, or allow yourself to be divorced by, a memoirist. Regardless of what a marital... Read More

Maybe you started running for fitness, or because it seemed like a good way to make friends. Or perhaps it was a distraction from an... Read More

The Scottish astrologer James Bassantin, born during the reign of James IV, was what we would now term a hustler. He believed himself of... Read More

As Donald Trump endures the eternity of the next month or so on a wooden bench in a courtroom in lower Manhattan, legions of his followers... Read More

In his new memoir, Salman Rushdie describes the moment he glimpsed his would-be murderer closing in on him.  “My eyes follow the... Read More

On a semi-regular basis, I interview authors about their writing processes and new books. You can find previous entries here. Today... Read More

Woody Allen leapt to defend New York at a time when everyone else was running it down. During the 1970s and 1980s—the “rotting of... Read More

I don’t want to join in the critical pile-on against Taylor Swift’s new 31-song double... Read More

The most nauseating, addictive thing about writing is the uncertainty—and I don’t mean... Read More

In 2022, Penguin Random House wanted to buy Simon & Schuster. The two publishing houses made up 37 percent and 11 percent of the market... Read More

Jerry Seinfeld, the fantastically successful comedian, once told an interviewer that he didn’t like performing his comedy at... Read More

In 1784, Immanuel Kant wrote the short essay “What is Enlightenment?” It’s not quite as influential or as pored-over as... Read More

In Nicolette Polek’s debut novel Bitter Water Opera, there is a woman who leaves her husband by taking one object from their... Read More

Something is rotten in the state of contemporary literature. You can smell it from a mile off—in the Poetry Foundation’s... Read More

In January, when packing my bags for a "reading retreat" in the Dominican Republic, I agonized about which books to bring. A few days later,... Read More

During the solar eclipse on April 8, Internet activity plummeted across North America. It might be safe to assume that the next... Read More

When Tammy Wynette was asked to write a memoir in her mid-30s, she initially declined, she said in an interview, because “I... Read More

There is a beautiful and melancholic word I like called anemoia. It means nostalgia for a time or a place one has never known. This is a... Read More

Via Kite & Key Media -- Many adults struggle to find a healthy relationship with smartphones and social media. But for kids and... Read More

Of all the things one might associate with Jerry Seinfeld, excited sentimentality might be the last. But remembering the day he shot the... Read More

At a February concert in Melbourne, Taylor Swift spoke to the stadium crowd of nearly one hundred thousand strong about The Tortured Poets... Read More

The bellhop at the Orlando hotel delivered a large red bag to the Cypress Penthouse, where he was met at the door by a woman in a... Read More

Sylvia Plath did not stick her head in an oven for this! When Taylor Swift took the Grammy’s stage last month to claim her award for... Read More