The University Bookman
Reviewing Books that Build Culture
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Which Philosophers Lived Their Thought?
When Nietzsche was still a classical philologist, not the Hyperborean philosopher he would become, he studied the work of Diogenes Laertius and was not impressed.
The Dismissed in Revolt
The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics by Salena Zito and Brad Todd. Crown Forum, 2018. Hardcover, 309 pages, $28. Addison Del Mastro “We as a country cannot just let our fellow Americans be left behind, dismissed because someone...
A Place on the Walls
How a home is decorated communicates the essence of the people living there. Even the briefest of glances can give a visitor insight into the personalities, religion, family ties, perhaps even the political inclinations of the inhabitants.
Reoccupying the City
TO THE POINT: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1967 Will we presently behold an exodus from the suburbs back to the city? Such a development would do more to save our urban life than could any amount of urban-renewal and model-cities subsidies. It is not impossible. Many...
The Necessity for a General Culture
“What Does Culture Mean?” From America’s British Culture, pp. 1–3 This slim book is a summary account of the culture that the people of the United States have inherited from Britain. Sometimes this is called the Anglo-Saxon culture—although it is not simply English,...
The Auroras of Helen Vendler
Helen Vendler’s The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar opens with a twelve-page account of her life as a critic, of a life well-lived with strong inner imperatives. At issue is her claim that she is less what a typical scholar is thought to be.
The Cinema of Failure
Terrence Malick is American cinema’s one Christian artist and he has now reached his most productive years, his Social Security years. His four recent movies, The Tree of Life (2011), To the Wonder (2012),
Stories of the Lost, Wandering Soul of Modern America
The short stories of Thomas McGuane can be summarized in the words of John Gay’s self-chosen epitaph: “Life is a jest, and all things shew it; / I thought so once, but now I know it.”
Feeding the Little Platoons
Frederick the Great observed that his army marched on its stomach. If we aim to civilize, not conquer, what should we feed Burke’s little platoons? At her first dinner party, Agnes Jekyll entertained John Ruskin, Edward Burne-Jones, and Robert Browning. This is a bit...
The Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.
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