‘Only Power Restrains Power’
James Burnham’s The Machiavellians at Seventy. Seventyyears ago, James Burnham, in the middle of his intellectual odyssey from Marxism to conservatism, wrote an insightful and timeless study of politics and the nature of political power in a book entitled The...Forget the Enlightenment—Focus on the Family
How the West Really Lost God by Mary Eberstadt. Templeton Press, 2013. Hardcover, 268 pages, $21. The influence of Christianity is noticeably waning throughout the West. As a result, Judeo-Christian tenets and principles that have long been in force are steadily—and...The Voice of Michael Oakeshott in the Conversation of Conservatism
A paper presented to the biennial meeting of the Michael Oakeshott Association, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colorado, September 28, 2013. by Wilfred M. McClay My title refers, of course, to Oakeshott’s celebrated essay, “The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation...History in A Secular Age
The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society by Brad S. Gregory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012. Hardcover, 574 pages, $40. In The Unintended Reformation, Brad S. Gregory argues that today’s Western world...Intellectual Courage and the Bitter Truth
On Essays and LettersIn the handsome new book, The Loss and Recovery of Truth (St. Augustine’s Press), we find a short 1978 essay of Gerhart Niemeyer. It was written on the occasion of two commencement addresses. One was the justly famous Harvard Address of Alexander...Reconsidering Orwell’s Essays
A Collection of Essays by George Orwell. Doubleday, 1952. [Harcourt, 1970] Reviewed by John P. Rossi George Orwell was the greatest essayist of the twentieth century. Sixty years ago, at the height of his fame as the author of Animal Farm, Orwell published a...
Patrick Dempsey in Forbes: Great or Garish?
Desperately seeking new readers, advertising revenue, and relevance in the new media, such financial stalwarts as The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and Forbes magazine have in recent years resorted to special supplements that highlight the lives of the...On Beyond Think Tanks
An interview with Mark Judge The University Bookman is pleased to present this interview with Mark Judge, one of the most interesting writers on contemporary culture. Judge is a writer and filmmaker who writes regularly for The Daily Caller and other publications....Visions of Order
The Unwinding: an Inner History of the New America by George Packer. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2013. Hardcover, 448 pages, $27.Liberal journalist George Packer has written a conservative book. At least, I found it to be conservative, at its core. In this “inner...
A pleasure to review @joldmcginn's fine book, WHY DEMOCRACY NEEDS THE RICH.
https://kirkcenter.org/reviews/how-should-we-think-about-inequality/
With thanks to my man, @lsheahan, who is giving @ubookman some "oomph" these days.
The radical materialist culture of the last two hundred years, equally common to both the Communist East and the capitalist West, has brought in its wake a high degree of material and technological advancement, with many obvious benefits for mankind. - William Scott on Aleksandr