The University Bookman
Reviewing Books that Build Culture
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 Seduction and Perils of Artificial Intelligence
“The inescapable truth is that AI is a transformative technology, even more so perhaps than were the computer and the internet. We are not even close to resolving fundamental questions such as how much autonomy we wish to grant AI and how greatly the adoption of AI will affect our freedom of choice.”
The Audacious Russell Kirk
“Neither Eliot nor Kirk would justify surrender in the face of conflict, especially when order in the commonwealth is at stake.”
The Imaginative Russell Kirk
“Michael Lucchese has gathered 17 essays in which Kirk discusses not only the Founding, but also the nation that the Revolution created, the distinctive nature of the people who imagined and developed it, and the traditions they inherited and adapted.”
Remembering Robert Fagles: From Suffering to Meaning
“[Fagles] took as the essence of tragedy Aeschylus’s phrase ‘pathei mathos,’ ‘learning via suffering,’ which contained in it the belief that we could reap a harvest of knowledge from the pain.”
Coming Home
“…Patrick Deneen draws from political theory, classics, American literature, and film to understand the American concept of homecoming and adventure.”
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.
Shop through Creed and Culture Publishing
