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 Visionary Stigmatists and the Hope of Mercy
“…Kengor proceeds in his history of key stigmatists through Christian history, looking at the medieval stigmatists of renown including Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Catherine of Sienna, to more modern stigmatists of the past century including Saint Padre Pio and Saint Faustina.”
Challenging the Contraceptive Mind
“…philosophy underlies her work and makes itself evident throughout. Though she applies economic terms to her findings about childbearing—with language of costs and benefits—and draws conclusions about economics and policy, Pakaluk is fundamentally making, alongside her subjects, a philosophical argument about the value of human life. Together with the women of her sample, Pakaluk maintains that children are blessings worth living and dying for, and that having one more child is always a blessing.”
Motherhood in an Age of Childlessness
“Pakaluk posits that her interviews revealed a startling thesis: a supernatural outlook, whereby self-sacrifice is assessed as gain, is perhaps the only way nowadays that most college-educated women are ever going to regard the benefits of large families as greater than the costs. “
The Conservative Resurgence
“Milikh begins his introductory essay by straightforwardly asserting that the goal of the book ‘is to correct the trajectory of the Right after several generations of political losses, moral delusions, and intellectual errors.'”
Religious Illiberalism and the American Order
“Copulsky’s work can only be described as the definitive history of religious illiberalism to the American order.”
Michel Houellebecq’s Annihilation: Dystopia Unbound in Late Postmodernism
“…Houellebecq offers a caveat against hopelessness. Beginning in the second half of the novel, after a vast portion of the plot mechanism has become manifest, Houellebecq introduces readers to the revamped possibilities for human life that love offers.”
Buckley at 100: Revisiting the Speeches of William F. Buckley Jr.
“…I asked William F. Buckley Jr. which of his books was the favorite… Since I did not have a game plan other than to say ‘hello,’ speaking with him was an unexpected opportunity to pop the question. ‘It has to be the book of my speeches,’ he answered. ‘It covers fifty years of my life. No other of my books does that.’”
Something Wicked This Way Comes
“Like the Early Modern period, our own age is a time of charlatanry and real evil…”
The Real Way to Build Back Better
“If twenty-first-century America, as divided and rancorous as she has been in generations, is to find authentic peace and prosperity, her citizens must look inside their hearts rather than out at the government for a path to renewal. Self-reform is the only way to build society back better, and the Christian religion has long served as its greatest catalyst… Thomas Griffin offers us a model for reform: the way of Saint Francis of Assisi, who was so suffused with love for Jesus Christ that he was able to renew his world.”
The Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.
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