The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Watch James Panero of the New Criterion discuss “The Urbanity of Russell Kirk” at the 2025 Gerald Russello Memorial Lecture.

The Urbanity of Russell Kirk

“The urban fabric must also be mended and darned through continuous upkeep. The city is not yours to experiment. From Russell to Russello, our ancestral spirits cast their shadows whether or not we choose to observe the city of god in the cities of men.”

Marxism and the Rising Generation

“Gonzalez and Gorka have performed an important service in bringing together a wide range of fact and theory and in establishing a coherent line stretching directly from Marx through many important figures to the present day.”

Cracking the Code to Civilization

“In a world flooded with online influencers, ‘red pill’ rhetoric, and algorithmic posturing, Newell offers something older, wiser, and far superior: a code of manliness rooted in the Western tradition of virtue, character, and service. His message is that true manliness is not a pose or performance; it is the integration of moral and intellectual excellence, what he calls ‘the manly heart.’”

France and the Problem of Abstraction

“…French people’s love for ideas, indeed for ideology, often puts them at odds with the pragmatic requisites of a mature democracy and with reality itself. France is, as she very aptly puts it, ‘a country of dreamers who fall into melancholy when reality catches up with them.’ But far from being merely a psychological explanation for French unhappiness, this idealism is the key to a political understanding of our complicated relationship with the very principle of democracy.”

What Popper Saw in Churchill

The Anglo-American Tradition of Liberty: A View from Europe by João Carlos Espada. Routledge, 2016. Hardcover, 212 pages, $149.95. DANIEL J. MAHONEY The Portuguese political theorist João Espada has written a most thoughtful and instructive book on the political and...

The Unwritten Constitution Today

Constitutional Morality and the Rise of the Quasi-Law by Bruce P. Frohnen and George W. Carey. Harvard University Press, 2016. Hardcover, 304 pages, $45. TED MCALLISTER One of the most serious questions of our time is whether the rise of the regulatory state has...

A Quiet American in Vietnam

A Quiet American in Vietnam

In this massive biography of Colonel Edward Lansdale, biographer Max Boot has given us the story of a quiet American who was not the quiet American.

Tomboys and Magic

Tomboys and Magic

The creepy-cozy tales of John Bellairs. Eve Tushnet Children fell in love with the tales of John Bellairs (1938–1991) because they perfectly combined creepy and cozy: the laughing skeleton, curled up by the fire with a mug of cider. In novels like The Curse of the...

Patiently Learning to Belong

Port William Novels & Stories: The Civil War to World War II by Wendell Berry. Library of America, 2018. Hardcover, 1018 pages, $40. This January, the Library of America released its first volume of Wendell Berry’s writings, Port William Novels & Stories (The...

After Liberalism, Religion?

Holy Wars and Holy Alliance: The Return of Religion to the Global Political Stage by Manlio Graziano. Columbia University Press, 2017. Hardcover, 368 pages, $35.   The liberal world order that we have complacently enjoyed for the last twenty-five years is...

Everything We Knew Was Wrong

Before Church and State: A Study of Social Order in the Sacramental Kingdom of St. Louis IX by Andrew Willard Jones. Emmaus Academic, 2017. Hardcover, 510 pages, $40.   Before Church and State, from the historian’s perspective, is undoubtedly a seminal work:...

Public Relations Disaster

The White King: Charles I, Traitor, Murderer, Martyr by Leanda de Lisle. PublicAffairs, 2017. Hardcover, 464 pages, $30.What most of us know about the reign of Charles I we know by way of myth. From Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers we know of the warmongering...

The Beauty of Order

The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition by James Matthew Wilson. The Catholic University of America Press, 2017. Paperback, 352 pages, $30. Despite hitting a few bumps, poet James Matthew Wilson’s The Vision of the Soul delivers a...

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.

"Delsol’s analysis stands out for the breadth of its perspective. Her essay covers topics as varied as corporatism, the French love for status and strikes, immigration, religion and secularism, populism and the role of intellectuals, Jacobinism, and the EU..."

Cracking the Code to Civilization
@CliffordBates12 on "The Code of Man: Love, Courage, Pride, Family, Country" (2nd Edition) by @waller_newell

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