The University Bookman
Reviewing Books that Build Culture
“To Think Faith” as Educators
“…faith and pedagogy should be in harmony. Smith’s guide is not a theory of faith and teaching or how to sprinkle faith within teaching. ‘It offers repeated practice at noticing and thinking through ways in which faith and the process of teaching might connect in everyday practice,’ in the mundane moments of elementary, secondary, or higher education classrooms.”
Every Educational Bureaucracy is Unhappy in Its Own Way
“In the end, Nikias’s story illustrates a recurring truth about bureaucracies: reformers often find themselves defeated not by external enemies but by the accumulated habits, incentives, and procedures of the organizations they serve.”
The Problems of American Higher Education
“In the spirit of Kirk, the conservative reformer must remember the imperfectability of human nature, a moral truth that the modern academy has forgotten.”
Techne and Themis in History
“The book explains what Western/European civilization is by telling the story of its birth, formation, evolution, and global influence. It ends with McDougall’s statement that from the perspective of the current times, ‘”Western civilization,” however defined, has become decadent, and is perhaps even dying.’”
Winston Churchill’s Path to Leadership
“He wrote of a vanished empire, of bygone comportment associated with society balls and faraway battlefields, and of a governing class that suddenly found themselves among the governed. As astonished as Churchill was at the pace of change during his lifetime, I think modern readers can perfectly relate to this sentiment. The pace of change has not diminished. Nor has the relatability of a young Winston Churchill.”
John Adams: Russell Kirk’s Founding Federalist
“…[Kirk] located the mainstream of the American Founding not with the Jeffersonian Republicans, but with their rivals in the Federalist party. Kirk admired them not only as practical statesmen, but also as anti-revolutionary thinkers in their own right. As he put it, the Constitution they supported was both ‘the most successful conservative device in the history of the world’ and a ‘great monument’ to the Federalists.”
The Patriotic Russell Kirk
“Taken together, the essays in this collection have a distinctly American air, but one spiced by the enlivening spirit of a much longer historical consciousness.”
Jesuits and Revolutions
“…these… reveal Carola’s gift as a novelist, reminding the reader that the great theological and ecclesiastical questions of the age were debated and decided by flesh-and-blood human beings with normal needs and emotions.”
Taking Movies Seriously, Perhaps Too Seriously
“Dalfonzo’s conception of film as a moral mirror that serves to reveal to us our lapses and failings is certainly founded on an honest and conscientious set of wishes—on that score I have no doubts. I nonetheless suspect that this hope emerges from a blurring of the formal and moral properties of art.”
The Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition. Click on the icon in the upper right corner of the video to see more episodes in this series or check out our YouTube page.
Kirk saw poetry, fiction, tradition, and restraint as essential to understanding America and preserving its character. In his review of "On America," @cjscalia explores Kirk’s vision of the founding, statesmanship, literature, and the enduring ideas that have shaped the republic.
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