Ulyssean Interrogations at Dusk, or Slowing Down at 65
By John Rodden. Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done…. Come, my friends, ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world. …for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the...
What the American Revolution Secured: Order, Justice, and Freedom
A Russell Kirk Center Special Series Throughout the semiquincentennial year celebrating America’s independence, The University Bookman will invite a range of writers and speakers to contribute to a series drawing upon Russell Kirk’s work on the American Revolution and...
From the Man Who Loved America
Fighting Enemies Foreign and Domestic: The Legacy of Angelo M. Codevilla Edited by Ryan P. Williams. Encounter Books, 2025. Hardcover, 128 pages, $24.99. Reviewed by Chuck Chalberg. If the title of this collection of essays written in memory of and tribute to the...
Smithian Wisdom on Demand
Just Sentiments: 22 Smithian Essays Edited by Daniel B. Klein and Erik W. Matson. CL Press/Fraser Institute, 2024. Paperback, 262 pages, $7.50 (free PDF download) Reviewed by Michael Munger. Just Sentiments is a curated, teachable set of serious interpretive essays....
In Praise of Poetry and Form
The Great Game: Essays on Poetics By Amit Majmudar. Acre Books, 2024. Paperback, 288 pages, $18. Reviewed by Steven Knepper. Literature, Amit Majmudar warns, must never plod: “Plodding prose, plodding thought, rhythmless lifeless stuff you can’t step to: that’s...
Monster is the Machine
The Bovadium Fragments: Together with The Origin of Bovadium By J. R. R. Tolkien. William Morrow, 2025. Hardcover, 144 pages, $26.99. Reviewed by Ben Reinhard. When Russell Kirk decried the automobile as “a mechanical Jacobin”—a revolutionary naturally destructive of...
After the New Left: Rereading Breaking Ranks
By John C. “Chuck” Chalberg. The recent death of Norman Podhoretz prompted me to return to his “political memoir,” Breaking Ranks. Published in 1979, it deserves to be read or re-read today—and not simply as a historical account of his evolution from left to right...
Amici
Michelangelo and Titian: A Tale of Rivalry and Genius By William E. Wallace. Princeton University Press, 2026. Hardcover, 248 pages, $35.00. Reviewed by Jesse Russell. There is a running joke that Americans remain perpetually torn between Puritanism and pornography....
Catholic or Nothing
Converts: From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, Why So Many Became Catholic in the 20th Century By Melanie McDonagh. Yale University Press, 2026. Hardcover, 354 pages, $38. Reviewed by Adam Schwartz. In September 2025, King Charles III visited the Birmingham Oratory to...
For America250, @lsheahan enters the fray:
What the American Revolution Secured: Order, Justice, and Freedom
A "revolution not made, but prevented.” Russell Kirk fondly and frequently quoted E. J. Payne’s pithy summary of Burke’s view of the Glorious Revolution.
"So yes, Lord Alfred, perhaps you are right after all. ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world! Perhaps one last Ulyssean adventure remains beyond the sunset, and perhaps some work of noble note may yet be done."