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.”

What the American Revolution Secured: Order, Justice, and Freedom

Throughout the semiquincentennial year celebrating America’s independence, The University Bookman will invite a range of writers and speakers to contribute to a series drawing upon Russell Kirk’s work on the American Revolution and the constitutional order it secured.

From the Man Who Loved America

“Angelo Codevilla advanced and argued for an anti-Wilsonian approach to both American foreign and American domestic policy.”

Smithian Wisdom on Demand

“Even readers who disagree with the collection’s broad normative valence will find that it consistently models a way of reading Smith as a unified thinker about persons-in-society—morally formed agents embedded in evolving rules, conventions, and institutions.”

What’s Good for GM is Good for Marcuse

Conservatives Against Capitalism: From the Industrial Revolution to Globalization by Peter Kolozi. Columbia University Press, 2017. Hardcover, 250 pages. $60. GRANT HAVERS Right-wing opposition to capitalism is well-known in European politics. As Marx once noted, the...

What Punishment? Whose Community?

The Machinery of Criminal Justice by Stephanos Bibas. Oxford University Press, 2012, 2015. Paperback, 320 pages, $29. CHARLES FAIN LEHMAN It is rare to see, especially from the right, a critique of the modern American criminal justice system that focuses not just on...

Everything You Think You Know About Fascism Is Wrong

The Age of Secularization by Augusto Del Noce, translated by Carlo Lancellotti. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017. Paperback, 304 pages, $35. Scott Beauchamp There’s a great tradition of Italian philosopher-historians who work by reverse engineering the present...

Who Is Blackford Oakes?

Buckley’s leading good guy. WILLIAM F. MEEHAN III The eleven Blackford Oakes spy novels by William F. Buckley Jr. are a significant part of his oeuvre and deserve consideration when discussing his life. What better way, then, to commemorate the ten-year anniversary of...

Rousseau’s Reactionary Disciple

Memoirs from Beyond the Grave: 1768–1800 by François-René de Chateaubriand, translated by Alex Andriesse. New York Review Books Classics, 2018. Softcover, 584 pages, $20. GREG MORRISON “Pass on now, reader; wade the river of blood that separates forever the old world,...

Trump so Far

BRUCE P. FROHNEN More than a year into his presidency, the Trump scandals continue. The “Russia conspiracy” has been shown for the fraud it always was. But one still hears about Mr. Trump’s personal vices and the crude nature of many of his public pronouncements. Some...

A Little More Crafty

Cræft: An Inquiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts by Alexander Langlands. W.W. Norton & Company, 2018. Hardcover, 352 pages, $27. GRACY OLMSTEAD What does it mean to be a craftsman? To us, the word is often caught up in artistry: the...

Waltharius and the Epic Quest for Epic Poetry

Waltharius edited and translated by Abram Ring. Peeters, 2016. Paperback, 198 pages, $63. A. M. JUSTER Western literature begins with greatness on a grand scale. Homer’s magnificent epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, created the framework and the impetus for...

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.

I have a review at the University Bookman (@KirkCenter) today of @AmitMajmudar's The Great Game: Essays on Poetics (@acre_books). Check it out 👇.

"No one...takes poetic hairpin turns at speed like Majmudar does. His poems are full of sonic swerves and surprises..."

Load More

Shop through Regnery
Support the Kirk Center
& University Bookman