The University Bookman
Reviewing Books that Build Culture
Join friends of the Bookman in New York City on December 8, 2025 for the Gerald Russello Memorial Lecture.
Conservative Fictions, Fictional Conservatism?
A conversation with Adam Bellow. A full transcript is below, and the unedited audio of this interview may be played or downloaded here (MP3, 27 MB, 27 minutes). Interviewed by MARK JUDGE Mark Judge: I am speaking with Adam Bellow, who is a well-known editor. He’s done...
The Meiji Restoration at 150
A critical gaze falls on Meiji sloganeering. JASON MORGAN In 1853, American ships under the command of U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Perry appeared in Uraga Bay off the coast of Japan. Their purpose was to deliver to the Japanese authorities a list of demands, couched...
The Duty to Rewrite History
Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian by Richard Aldous. W.W. Norton, 2017. Hardcover, 486 pages, $30. John C. Chalberg Early on in his magisterial biography of an “imperial historian,” biographer Richard Aldous asks a question that he never really answers: Was Arthur...
Hoffer and the True Believers
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer. Perennial Classics, 1960, 2010. Paperback, 192 pages, $15. PEDRO BLAS GONZÁLEZ The American philosopher Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) is a rare thinker. Hoffer is a philosopher in the classic sense...
What Did the Declaration Declare?
The Heart of the Declaration: The Founders’ Case for an Activist Government by Steve Pincus. Yale University Press, 2016. Hardcover, 207 pages, $26. GLENN A. MOOTS Steve Pincus’s The Heart of the Declaration promises a “new perspective” on the Founders and the intent...
Degrees of Uselessness
A Practical Education: Why Liberal Arts Majors Make Great Employees by Randall Stross. Redwood Press / Stanford University Press, 2017. Hardcover, 291 pages, $25. KEVIN P. SHIELDS In today’s business culture of globalization and specialization a traditional liberal...
Good Music and Christian Music
Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music? Larry Norman and the Perils of Christian Rock by Gregory Alan Thornbury. Convergent Books, 2018. Hardcover, 292 pages. $26. MARK HIJLEH Around 1542, Martin Luther complained, “Why is it that we have so many fine poems and...
The Religion of Human Rights
The Debasement of Human Rights: How Politics Sabotage the Ideal of Freedom by Aaron Rhodes. Encounter Books, 2018. Hardcover, 280 pages, $28. Addison Del Mastro The Debasement of Human Rights, by human rights scholar and activist Aaron Rhodes, is really two books: one...
Vandenberg in Full: Babbitt No More
Arthur Vandenberg: The Man in the Middle of the American Century by Hendrik Meijer. University of Chicago Press, 2017. Hardcover, 448 pages, $35. JON K. LAUCK From the Civil War until the World War II era the American Midwest region was central to American life, as...
The Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.
