The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

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.”

The Collapse of Constitutional Consciousness

“…Huq sees a pattern of injustice where those who ‘bridle against government regulation tend to have an easy glide path into federal court,’ while those who contend that individual rights have been violated find the courts ‘less hospitable.’ He asks meaningful questions about the nature of justice and whether the Constitution supports a just society, yet he subordinates the procedural and structural elements of the Constitution, which give it a backbone and endow it with its strength, to ideological notions of fairness, equity, and cherry-picked rights. He misses the irony in that the very qualities he claims to champion are lost in any system that fails to adhere to procedural norms, including those which set limits to remedies by those acting on behalf of the government.”

Localism is Americanism

“In this fine collection of essays there is not so much as a single hint that any sort of top down solution is the answer, much less a top down solution that requires either a big government or a political figure with something between near-dictatorial and dictatorial power. For localists, it’s bottom up all the way.”

A Theological Virtue in the Earthly City

“Through the lens of hope, Lamb shows how Augustine allows individuals to belong to the City of God and the Earthly City simultaneously, since all worldly concerns and endeavors are shaped by the love of God and contribute to man’s proper end of union with Him.”

Hope—Is It Warranted at This Point?

Hope—Is It Warranted at This Point?

“The past generation of American life, on Hunter’s account, has been one of intensifying ‘exhaustion’ and distrust, as the sources of pluralism have multiplied, and the endlessly ‘worked-through’ soil of the hybrid-Enlightenment has come to seem dry and depleted, no longer able to provide plausible accounts of human nature and the meaning of history that a majority of Americans can sign onto.”

The Life of Joseph Epstein

The Life of Joseph Epstein

“This might have been a highly political book detailing the evolution of a conventional Cold War liberal into the conservative that he is regarded as being (even if he doesn’t label himself as such in these pages). It might have been, but it isn’t. No, this memoir was written simply because Epstein sees his life as ’emblematic of the times’ and secondly because he sees himself as having acquired the literary skill necessary to ‘recount that life well.'”

Order for a Disordered Time

Order for a Disordered Time

“When one thinks of order one might think of the phrase law and order. Kirk explains, however, that order is wider and larger than law.”

Order for a Disordered Time

Kirk’s Constitution: From the Roots to the End of American Order?

“The tragedy is that Kirk was correct: our Constitution was grounded in a deeper tradition, embodied in the people’s habits of thought and social practice, its religion, its historical common mind, its recognition of the importance and nature of order in the soul and, from it, order in the commonwealth. It is this tradition—this people—we have more than half lost. From this loss we have lost our public order, along with the Constitution that once supported it through good, legitimate law. “

The Babbitt School of Conservatism

The Babbitt School of Conservatism

“Viereck and Kirk—the one a Pulitzer-winning poet, the other a highly regarded author of eerie fiction—understood the nexus of morality, imagination, and politics. But the businessmen, journalists, policy experts, and politicians who came to define the conservative movement just a few years after the appearance of The Conservative Mind did not.”

The Babbitt School of Conservatism

The Conservative Need for Conservative Philosophy

“Ryn does not take sides in the ideological wars but urges conservatives to reject ideology altogether and to engage in deeper philosophical thinking. Philosophy does the opposite of ideology. It recognizes complexity and gropes toward a deeper understanding of reality that builds on the insights of previous thinkers. There are no final answers in true philosophy… Moreover, monistic, ideological thinking is inconsistent with constitutional politics, which requires compromise and consensus.”

The Babbitt School of Conservatism

A Half Century of Conservative Criticism

“…the most important theme of his essays suggests that all the common answers about where conservatism went wrong avoid a more fundamental one: conservatives have been too obsessed with politics.”

Literary Virtue and Vice

Literary Virtue and Vice

“Griffis, Ooms, and Roberts offer practices of thought and attention that those eager to read deeply would do well to implement. Yet those eager to learn how Christianity ought to inform their reading and thinking would do well to consult other writers less concerned with rehearsing the language of our milieu, such as C.S. Lewis, Flannery O’Connor, T.S. Eliot, Dana Gioia.”

The Book Gallery

A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.

Summer is here and the days are long. Slowing schedules allow time for many of us to sink into the queue of books that have been patiently waiting for us over the busyness of our end of spring schedules.

@lsheahan, @DavidGBonaguraJ, @darrellfalconbu

Load More

Shop through Regnery
Support the Kirk Center
& University Bookman