Ron Charles
@roncharles.bsky.social
I write about books at https://roncharles.substack.com/
Cockroaches can survive anything. Apparently, so can book critics. Six months after "leaving" The Washington Post, I’m taking stock of life as an independent journalist — with no colleagues, no IT support, and lots of books. roncharles.substack.com/p/six-months...
Six Months After the Fall
There is life after The Washington Post — but no IT support.
roncharles.substack.com
When it comes to their history, Americans are not as fragile or stupid as the White House claims. There’s no need to wreck the Smithsonian to “save our story.” roncharles.substack.com/p/americans-...
Americans Don’t Need Saving from Their History
Trump's attack on the Smithsonian is an affront to our intelligence.
roncharles.substack.com
Extraordinary reporting on how the whole White House shakedown scheme works: www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
Exclusive | ‘The Boss Wants This Money’: Inside Trump’s Unprecedented Fundraising Operation
Meredith O’Rourke, nicknamed ‘princess of darkness,’ carries out the president’s desire to wring hundreds of millions from companies for his projects.
wsj.com
Trump’s long-range voter suppression plan: www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
Trump Turns Up the Heat on RFK Jr. to Cut Back Childhood Vaccines
The president is focused on the shots’ alleged tie to autism, even though White House advisers wanted to tone down attention to the issue ahead of the midterms.
wsj.com
Claire Vaye Watkins's "Yellow Pine" is funny, sexy, and surprisingly hopeful—about the world going to hell. Plus: I asked Watkins why anyone would long for a child amid environmental collapse. Her answer is embedded in this review. roncharles.substack.com/p/hot-and-bo...
Hot and Bothered
Claire Vaye Watkins’s “Yellow Pine” is a smart, sexy, surprisingly hopeful novel about the world going to hell.
roncharles.substack.com
I thought H.R. 7661 — the national book-banning bill — would quietly die in Congress. I was wrong. roncharles.substack.com/p/the-book-b...
The Book Banning Bill That Won’t Die
What looked like political theater is becoming a genuine threat to the freedom to read.
roncharles.substack.com
Few writers are as funny, ambitious, and unpredictable as Colson Whitehead. His new novel, "Cool Machine," brings the Harlem Trilogy to a deeply satisfying close. Here's my review. roncharles.substack.com/p/colson-whi...
Colson Whitehead’s Last Heist
“Cool Machine” bids farewell to Ray Carney in a witty, bloody, and unexpectedly moving finale to the Harlem Trilogy.
roncharles.substack.com
Trump’s targeting of NYT journalists is so egregious, his DOJ didn’t even follow its own watered-down rules for subpoenaing journalists. He’s once again claiming “national security” because of an embarrassing story. Watch @trevortimm.bsky.social explain:
What good are lower taxes and deregulation if you can’t also break the law? The Trump administration wants to spread the pleasures of impunity to corporate America. www.wsj.com/finance/regu...
The Justice Department Is Pulling Back on Prosecuting Corporate Crime
Prosecutors have declined to charge businesses in a number of recent cases—despite believing that senior employees were involved in wrongdoing.
wsj.com
I’m so glad Trump was able to lower taxes for these stressed aristocrats. www.wsj.com/lifestyle/re...
When One Nanny Isn’t Enough, ‘CEO Parents’ Hire a Whole Team
One nanny isn’t cutting it anymore. Some parents are spending upward of $250,000 on teams for their children. Luxury services offer potty-training, baby chefs and bike-riding lessons.
wsj.com
English is doing just fine. Thousands of other languages aren't. Sophia Smith Galer's remarkable new book argues that every disappearing language takes with it a unique way of understanding the world. My review leads today's newsletter: roncharles.substack.com/p/the-langua...
The Language of Freedom
English doesn’t need saving. Thousands of other languages do.
roncharles.substack.com
Republicans truly looking after all Americans!
FactPost@factpostnews.bsky.social · 3w agoTrump: The One Big Beautiful Bill tax cuts helped my friend buy a private jet
Blue diamonds. Vermeer paintings. Gold bars. Nathaniel Rich's "Cloudthief" imagines the greatest heist in American history — and the most valuable loot is us. roncharles.substack.com/p/the-greate...
The Greatest Heist in American History
In Nathaniel Rich’s unsettling thriller, “Cloudthief,” the most valuable loot is us.
roncharles.substack.com
Aside from the lies about his finances, which we’ve grown to expect, it’s extraordinary how uncharitable Trump is compared to past presidents who had far less money. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/11/u...
Trump Justifies $2 Billion Made as President With Inaccurate Claims
President Trump has wrongly attributed the $2 billion windfall he gained during his second term to a hot stock market and claimed that he was the only president to donate his salary.
nytimes.com
Things one hears in the little Aspen, Colo., airport: “No kid can make it through a flight without an iPad!”
While the GOP is screaming about the evils of socialism…. WSJ: White House Pressures Top U.S. Grocers to Lower Beef Prices
Everyone's writing about Dua Lipa's new library of banned books. I just went. Here's what it's like inside. roncharles.substack.com/p/inside-dua...
Inside Dua Lipa’s Library of Banned Books
A firsthand look at the new collection beneath one of the most beautiful bookstores in the world.
roncharles.substack.com
Lisbon's oldest bookstore survived the 1755 earthquake, still has Fernando Pessoa on its bestseller list — and may have inspired me to buy one tote bag too many. (Is that even possible?) This week's newsletter comes to you from Portugal. roncharles.substack.com/p/a-book-cri...
A Book Critic Abroad
Bookstores, castles, and the serendipity of literary travel.
roncharles.substack.com
Daniel Mason's delightful new novel, “Country People,” follows an incurable dreamer into a world of folktales, rabbit holes, and underground mysteries. roncharles.substack.com/p/can-you-di...
Can You Dig It?
Daniel Mason’s “Country People” follows an incurable dreamer into a world of folktales, rabbit holes, and underground mysteries.
roncharles.substack.com
This little gobsmacking paragraph conveys so much that's screwed up about US politics: "The postmortem analysis was stark: Money alone can’t save candidates with a weak ground game and a muddled message. Where to go next, though, is unclear." www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
Wall Street Realizes It Needs More Than Money to Counter Mamdani
After big primary wins by the mayor’s progressive allies, New York’s business elites are rewriting their political strategy.
wsj.com
Off to Lisbon tomorrow! But first: How not to be a terrible tourist. Packing for Portugal has me thinking about maps, manners, and why we've always traveled. roncharles.substack.com/p/are-we-the...
Are We There Yet?
Maps, myths, and the lure of somewhere else.
roncharles.substack.com
A White couple returns to a Black community after being exonerated of murder. The end, right? Not even close. My review of "The Fervent Whites": roncharles.substack.com/p/there-goes...
There Goes the Neighborhood
In De'Shawn Charles Winslow's thriller, “The Fervent Whites," a wrongfully convicted White couple returns to a Black community — and old wounds bleed again.
roncharles.substack.com
My favorite novel of last year had the world's worst elevator pitch: Boxing. Blackface. 500 pages long. I asked Lucas Schaefer how he wrote, sold, and promoted it. roncharles.substack.com/i/202498060/...
Jefferson thought slavery was wrong. His solution was not racial equality. It was mass deportation. A new history argues that Jefferson spent years trying to devise ways to remove Black people from the US. That's not the man most of us studied in school. roncharles.substack.com/p/the-countr...
The Country Jefferson Really Wanted
The author of the Declaration of Independence thought slavery was bad. So was his solution.
roncharles.substack.com
“Babies are mentioned 33 times in ‘Communion,’ almost as often as Mr. Vance writes of Mr. Trump.” Seems perfectly reasonable to use those terms interchangeably. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/16/u...
Takeaways From JD Vance’s Book: ‘Childless Cat Ladies,’ the Pope and Usha Vance
nytimes.com
Aggressively dismissive review of JD Vance’s ‘Communion’ in the WSJ: “Whether Mr. Vance’s error arose from laziness or dishonesty or something else, I don’t know.” www.wsj.com/arts-culture...
‘Communion’ Review: The Veep’s Progress
JD Vance recounts his conversion to Catholicism and explains what he calls a “Christian approach to economics.”
wsj.com
Andrew Sean Greer's comic novel "Villa Coco" isn't mere ice cream; it's stracciatella gelato served in one of the most beautiful places on earth. My review: roncharles.substack.com/p/andrew-sea...
Andrew Sean Greer Under the Tuscan Fun
In “Villa Coco,” a young American goes to Italy for serious work and finds himself trapped in a delightful comedy.
roncharles.substack.com
The less evidence there is, the more convincing some people find a conspiracy theory. Two fascinating new books on belief, evidence, and the strange appeal of certainty. roncharles.substack.com/p/so-true-it...
So True It’s Impossible to Prove
Two fascinating books examine how people decide what to believe.
roncharles.substack.com
Ben Fountain has written a satire so absurd it keeps bumping into America's bonkers political reality. My review of “Rasputin Swims the Potomac”: roncharles.substack.com/p/ben-founta...
Ben Fountain imagines Trump meeting his match
A hypnotic wrestler joins forces with the president in “Rasputin Swims the Potomac”
roncharles.substack.com
One writer sat silently on stage for an hour at the Hay Festival because lawyers admonished her not to speak. Sarah Wynn-Williams's silence echoes a larger threat: a Trump administration proposal that could impose years-long gag orders on federal employees. roncharles.substack.com/p/keep-your-...
Keep Your Mouth Shut — or Else
Corporations perfected the art of silencing critics. Now the White House wants in.
roncharles.substack.com