Conservative at the Core: A New History of American Conservatism By Allan J. Lichtman. University of Notre Dame Press, 2025. Hardcover, 376 pages, $32. Reviewed by Michael Lucchese. For a decade now, the American Left has utterly failed to understand the forces behind...
Poet in the New World: Poems, 1946-1953 Czeslaw Milosz. Ecco, 2025. Hardcover, 160 pages, $28. Reviewed by Daniel James Sundahl. When Czeslaw Milosz was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1980, he was introduced as a writer “who with uncompromising clearsightedness voices...
Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual Biography. By Tom Arnold-Forster. Princeton University Press, 2025. Hardcover, 368 pages, $35. Reviewed by John C. “Chuck” Chalberg. Immersed as he must have been in the papers, columns, and books of Walter Lippmann, intellectual...
Crabgrass Catholicism: How Suburbanization Transformed Faith and Politics in Postwar America By Stephen M. Koeth, CSC. University of Chicago Press, 2025. Paperback, 328 pages, $30. Reviewed by Jacob Akey. This September, the cardinal archbishop of New York unveiled a...
By Bill Meehan. As his centennial year comes to a close, I’d like to advocate for a useful way to look back on the life and work of William F. Buckley Jr. Known mostly for his television show Firing Line and his journal of opinion National Review, the American public...
Political Breakdown: Why Politics Have Failed By Lawrence M. Mead. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2025. Hardcover, 183 pages, $110.95. Reviewed by Frank Filocomo. If it wasn’t already obvious, today’s politics is burdened by third rails, sacred cows that ought not be...
Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity By Joshua Gibbs. Circe Institute, 2024. Hardcover, 272 pages, $28.99 Reviewed by Sarah Reardon. A significant part of Russell Kirk’s legacy is that he reminded moderns to seek and cherish the “permanent things”...
Personalism for the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honor of David Walsh Edited by Thomas W. Holman and Richard Avramenko. Lexington Books, 2025. Hardcover, 266 pages, $115. Reviewed by Grant R. Martsolf. The first time I had ever heard of ChatGPT was in April of...
By Gerald J. Russello. Editors’ Note: The University Bookman honors the fourth anniversary of the passing of its long-time editor, Gerald J. Russello, by republishing this essay on one of Gerald’s favorite subjects: Christopher Dawson. This essay appeared in Faith...
Silent No More: Bible Women Speak Up, A Poetic Meditation By Christine Kohler. Resource Publications, 2024. Hardcover, 78 pages, $25.00. Reviewed by Annmarie McLaughlin. Christine Kohler’s poetry debut, Silent No More: Bible Women Speak Up, A Poetic Meditation,...
Family Homes and Drive-in Churches
@JacobRAkey (@firstthingsmag) on "Crabgrass Catholicism: How Suburbanization Transformed Faith and Politics in Postwar America" by Stephen M. Koeth, CSC. @UofC Press