The Castle

Jon Ronson's daughter, his only child, is drawn one late night to a mysterious castle in the forests of New England. What follows pulls him into a strange world of men who have lost their footing and are searching, at almost any cost, for purpose and control.

The crisis of masculinity, in some of its stranger and more destructive forms, arrives in Ronson's life with no warning. As he digs in, the questions pile up. What is "Princessing"? Why would a lawn care influencer appear as a baby in front of billions of online viewers? How did a member of the Skeptic Society wreck his own life in pursuit of a twisted idea of chivalry? And, more urgently, why are two recently released murderers heading to see him?

Ronson looks at a society changing fast, where many men have drifted away from reality. Some behave like separatists, and others have sunk deep into ideological rabbit holes. He asks whether this signals a complete fracturing of society, a new era of disinhibition in which anything goes.

The book is Ronson's first full-length work in years, and he brings his usual mix of dark humor and psychological insight to it. Written as a darkly comic investigation, it takes readers inside the Castle itself and introduces a new lost generation of men.