The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Defending the Christian Faith

“In 100 Tough Questions For Catholics: Common Obstacles To Faith Today… David G. Bonagura, Jr. gives bite-sized answers to dozens of big questions about the faith.”

Geopolitics and the Making of the Modern World

“Brands’s book should find a ready audience among those interested in developments in the international scene over the last century. It is particularly effective in dealing with the threat that China’s emerging power and influence pose to the West today…”

The Context for Human Dignity

“While the twentieth century was still sporadically marked by remnants of Christian influence and dominance, the twenty-first has seen the final divorce of the secular and sacred, and the consequences are evident. What Leo XIII warned of, the evils he battled, have been let loose, paradigmatically captured by Artificial Intelligence which poorly imitates and devalues that which makes us essentially human… We would do well then to read Hittinger’s book in reflecting on how to face these challenges.”

Between Greatness and Hubris 

“At the core of [the book] is the notion that while America is an exceptional nation, we are not immune from the perils that beset past countries and empires.”

Untethered Revolution

The Expanding Blaze: How the American Revolution Ignited the World, 1775–1848 by Jonathan Israel. Princeton University Press, 2017. Hardcover, 768 pages, $40. We know what partisanship is without invoking Aristotle. We see it all around us, especially after collective...

Literature as Counterculture

A conversation with Robert P. WaxlerRobert P. Waxler is professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and cofounder of the Changing Lives Through Literature program. AM: I’m grateful for this interview, Bob. As you know, I read and enjoyed your...

The Enigma of the Black Republican

The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power by Leah Wright Rigueur. Princeton University Press, 2015. Hardcover, 432 pages, $37.50.In her authorial debut, The Loneliness of the Black Republican, Harvard historian Leah Wright...

A Biographical Interview with Russell Kirk

A Biographical Interview with Russell Kirk

We have just posted an extensive biographical interview of Russell Kirk, conducted in 1989 by Sally Wright (whose novels were reviewed recently in the University Bookman). In “Russell Kirk: Reflections on a Vagrant Career,” Wright captured Kirk’s perspectives on his...

Latest Newsletter

Latest Newsletter

The new Permanent Things Newsletter is now available, featuring reports from a gathering of the John Adams Society of Harvard, highlights on recent Kirk Center Fellows, and a conference on the moral imagination in Kirk, Bradbury, Eliot, and others. We are also...

Russell Kirk: Reflections on a Vagrant Career

An extensive biographical interview with mystery novelist Sally Wright, conducted in February 1989. This interview with Russell Kirk took place largely in February 1989 when Dr. Kirk was seventy-two. It was a great privilege for me to hear him express his perceptions...

One Hundred Years of Communism

Sempa discusses the history, atrocities, and appeal of communism on the hundredth anniversary of the Russian revolution. He recaps books including the Black Book of Communism, the Gulag Archipelago, and The Harvest of Sorrows.

The Ambitious Intellectual

Susan Sontag: the Making of an Icon, Revised and Updated by Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock. University Press of Mississippi, 2016. Paperback, 368 pages, $30. She lauds the way the North Vietnamese “genuinely care” about downed American pilots, providing more meat for...

The Catholic Novel in an Age of Political Correctness

Oregon Confetti, by Lee Oser. Wiseblood Books, 2017 Paper, 309 pages, $13. Reviewed by Trevor C. Merrill If one were to throw assorted works of G. K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, and Thomas Pynchon into a blender and press the button labeled “purée,” the resulting...

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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