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.”

First States, then Nation

by Staff | Nov 19, 2017

The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765–1800 by Aaron N. Coleman. Lexington Books, 2016. Paper, 259 pages, $46.99.In 1867, exulting in the Union victory in the Civil War, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner asked a...

The Ark of Tradition

by Staff | Nov 19, 2017

Roman Catholicism and Political Form by Carl Schmitt, translated by G. L. Ulmen. Praeger, (1923) 1996. Hardcover, 112 pages, $94. In Carl Schmitt’s masterful but underappreciated essay of 1923, Roman Catholicism and Political Form—written well before his apostasy...

The Education of Franklin Foer

by Staff | Nov 12, 2017

World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech by Franklin Foer. Penguin Press, 2017. Hardcover, 272 pages, $27.“What could become of such a child of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when he should wake up to find himself required to play the game of...

Frederick Turner, Bard and Prophet

by Thomas F. Bertonneau | Nov 12, 2017

Apocalypse: An Epic Poem by Frederick Turner. The Ilium Press, 2016. Hardcover, 352 pages, $25.Whereas The University Bookman often confines itself to reviews of scholarly books, that is to say, of nonfiction, the present review-essay, although it addresses several...

Perhaps Our Shortage of Energy Is a Disguised Blessing

by Staff | Nov 11, 2017

Let it be said for Arab presidents and potentates that they have compelled nearly all of us in this land to think seriously about problems of energy asrelated to our immediate and our remote future. Even were Levantine oil to resume its flow into American tanks...

Man, Enemy of Nature

by Staff | Nov 11, 2017

In our 20th century, humankind is proud of “conquering nature,” by tools that vary from the bulldozerto insecticides. But like other merciless conquests, this victory may end in the destruction of the victor. Nature is not wholly tamed, of course. Not long...

Does Anybody Take the Energy ‘Crisis’ Seriously?

by Staff | Nov 10, 2017

Although America’s sources of energy have not increased since we began to hear about the “energy crisis” a few years ago, our population goes on consuming fuels and other sources of energy as if thermal units, like dollar bills, came off a Washington press. There is...

Our Grandchildren May Be Chilly

by Russell Kirk | Nov 10, 2017

Even on the sheltered southern side of our old house, last night, our outside thermometer’s mercury retreated down into its cup—which means that the temperature was more than 30 degrees below zero. With insulation and natural-gas heat, this didn’t bother us. But not...

The Mechanical Jacobin

by Staff | Nov 10, 2017

Mr. Henry Ford II recently remarked that as other countries obtain automobiles on the scale of ownership in the United States, their culture will approximate to ours. This is too true. And other lands lack the space and adaptability of America, so that the popular...