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.”

Marxism and the Rising Generation

“Gonzalez and Gorka have performed an important service in bringing together a wide range of fact and theory and in establishing a coherent line stretching directly from Marx through many important figures to the present day.”

Cracking the Code to Civilization

“In a world flooded with online influencers, ‘red pill’ rhetoric, and algorithmic posturing, Newell offers something older, wiser, and far superior: a code of manliness rooted in the Western tradition of virtue, character, and service. His message is that true manliness is not a pose or performance; it is the integration of moral and intellectual excellence, what he calls ‘the manly heart.’”

France and the Problem of Abstraction

“…French people’s love for ideas, indeed for ideology, often puts them at odds with the pragmatic requisites of a mature democracy and with reality itself. France is, as she very aptly puts it, ‘a country of dreamers who fall into melancholy when reality catches up with them.’ But far from being merely a psychological explanation for French unhappiness, this idealism is the key to a political understanding of our complicated relationship with the very principle of democracy.”

Russell Kirk: Reflections on a Vagrant Career

An extensive biographical interview with mystery novelist Sally Wright, conducted in February 1989. This interview with Russell Kirk took place largely in February 1989 when Dr. Kirk was seventy-two. It was a great privilege for me to hear him express his perceptions...

One Hundred Years of Communism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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.

"Delsol’s analysis stands out for the breadth of its perspective. Her essay covers topics as varied as corporatism, the French love for status and strikes, immigration, religion and secularism, populism and the role of intellectuals, Jacobinism, and the EU..."

Cracking the Code to Civilization
@CliffordBates12 on "The Code of Man: Love, Courage, Pride, Family, Country" (2nd Edition) by @waller_newell

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