The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Support the University Bookman during our annual Kirktober Fundraiser, and receive an audio copy of Kirk’s short story, What Shadows We Pursue.

Kirktober 2025: James Panero and Adam Simon on the Haunted House

October 28, 2025

On Tuesday, October 28, at 6:00 PM, you are invited to join University Bookman editor Luke Sheahan, Hollywood screenwriter Adam Simon, and New Criterion executive editor James Panero, as they explore the theme of the haunted house in gothic literature and its relationship to conservative thought and imagination.

Register for this free webinar here.

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.”

Christopher Dawson and Pluralism

“In particular, I want to examine three aspects of Dawson’s thought: his conclusion that cultures, especially Western culture, historically have been pluralist; his contention that a pluralism of cultures preserves a sphere of freedom from dominant modern ideologies that would eliminate that freedom; and finally, Dawson’s conviction that a pluralist world represents a new opportunity for evangelization.”

Trust and Hope as the Final Words

“Each poem is biblically rooted, but Kohler draws on extra-biblical sources and her own creative imagination to ponder what her characters may have been thinking during the pivotal moments of their mostly undocumented lives. The result is a beautiful exploration into the hearts and minds of the women of the Bible—both named and unnamed—that leaves readers feeling as though the women are imminently present, sharing their innermost thoughts and the overlooked aspects of their experiences.”

The Other Greek Woman

“Felson’s Penelope, who seems, in all probability, very close to Homer’s Penelope, is the faithful wife of Odysseus, but she is also the independent and flirtatious matriarch who rules over her household and teases the suitors, whom she views as her ‘geese.’”

One Hundred Years of Communism

by Francis P. Sempa | Dec 3, 2017

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

by Staff | Dec 3, 2017

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

by Trevor C. Merrill | Nov 26, 2017

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...

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...