The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

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.

Ideas Matter Now More Than Ever

“…Hörcher and Pitt convey theory by packaging it within the particularity of British politics that has been informed by intellectual conservatism.”

America’s Treasured Declaration

“It serves us with a reminder that the Declaration is America’s most sacred relic, a symbol of our founding principles, and a text that continues to play a quintessential part in American culture. The Declaration of Independence binds us together and makes us one nation.”

Beyond the Tithe: Unearthing Two Millennia of Christian Political Economy

“Themes of wealth, poverty, and greed pervade early Christian writing about markets. So, too, do concerns about justice in price, profit, and lending at interest.”

The (Mis)measure of Man

The (Mis)measure of Man

One way of defining “rationalism” (when the term is understood as a flaw rather than a virtue) is that it is the attempt to replace experience by technique. In his important new book, historian Jerry Muller takes on a particular species of rationalism: our modern fixation on replacing expert judgment with might be described as “the dictatorship of the quantifiable.”

Athwart Silicon Valley

Athwart Silicon Valley

There’s a phrase once heard in television commercials and now common on social media: life comes at you fast. The social media gag is often used to expose pundits who advocated position X two years ago, and now advocate position Y.

The Two Minds that Made Europe

The Two Minds that Made Europe

Michael Massing’s thesis in this massive undertaking, Fatal Discord, argues that the rift between Erasmus and Luther—now some five hundred years past—defines the rippling course then taken by the Western mind.

Put In This World to Do Battle

Put In This World to Do Battle

Imaginative Conservatism will be of primary interest to fans of Russell Kirk and those interested in the history of twentieth-century conservative thought. Kirk was one of the foremost voices of American conservatism and this look into his personal correspondence is invaluable to understand the man and the movement.

Philanthropy Is Not Charity

Philanthropy Is Not Charity

In The Philanthropic Revolution, Jeremy Beer succeeds in his two-pronged effort to delineate charity from philanthropy, both in their actual practice and in their distinct origins, and to expose the long-ignored skeletons of philanthropy’s deep, historical closets.

Cracking Jokes at the Crack of Doom

Cracking Jokes at the Crack of Doom

In the lobby of the Ford’s Theatre Center for Education and Leadership in Washington, D.C. stands a three-and-a-half-story tower of Lincoln books. It contains fewer than half of the fifteen thousand books—and counting—published about the sixteenth president.

The Cycles of Networked History?

The Cycles of Networked History?

Niall Ferguson’s The Square and the Tower is a short, sometimes too short, book that provides an interesting new perspective on history and how individuals’ personal networks—and networks of nations and corporate entities like businesses and associations—shape it

The Questions Behind Populism

The Questions Behind Populism

Over the course of the 2016 Presidential election, Americans became very familiar with the resurgence of an old “ism”: populism. Elites attempted to revive the word as an accusation, one they hurled at Donald Trump and his supporters as on “the wrong side of history.”

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.

America’s Treasured Declaration
Matt Riffe on "National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America" by Michael Auslin.
@SimonBooks @JackMillerCtr

Ideas Matter Now More Than Ever
@shawn_whatley on "Intellectual Conservatism: From Burke to Scruton," edited by @HorcherF and @DanJTPitt
@routledgebooks

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