THE CASTLE

Lives of not-so-quiet desperation.

While investigative journalist and author Ronson (The Psychopath Test, 2011) recovered from surgery in 2023, his son, Joel, frantically texted him late one night after an eerie trip to a party at a Gothic-style castle in Connecticut. Along with three friends, Joel found himself in the unnerving presence of the property’s owner, whose true intentions, Joel says, were to cast women for a proposed Netflix lord-seeking-princess reality show. The disquieting event sparks Ronson’s curiosity about the property owner. His research uncovers that the enormous medieval-style castle, replete with a drawbridge, turrets, gargoyles, and a Playboy Mansion-inspired hot-tub grotto room, was owned by Chicago steel industry heir Chris Mark, a divorced, bipolar scion in his 60s who “lured” women to the property. Ronson visits Mark and his mansion in search of answers, prompting an investigation into why certain men, several of whom he profiles in depth, seemed stuck in a state of powerless, purposeless anxiety. Although Mark ends up recanting much of what he’d divulged to Ronson during their interview, his “spiraling” behavior inspires the author to investigate other “unraveling” men “losing their footing in the world, falling out of time—mostly because I was, to be honest, very scared of becoming one myself.” The men he writes about include “Manosphere Man” Dan Bilzerian, “whose thirty-one million Instagram followers got to watch him sit on thrones next to lions, walk through forests with assault rifles, and dine on private yachts with near-naked women.” The author also witnesses the disgraced actor Armie Hammer “in the midst of a hedonistic spree.” In inserting himself into examinations of these men (Mark’s is particularly head-spinning), Ronson provides exacting details and insider perspectives amplifying his subjects’ psychological motivations and their consequences. The result is a mesmerizing work of gonzo journalism at its most intriguing.

A provocative and disturbing look at unmoored men in distress.