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.

To Find Eyes to See

“Hren selects earnest classics that have stood the test of time—books that generations of readers have found edifying and moving. But also, in the introduction and conclusion alike, Hren returns to another key point of fiction: it doesn’t just help us see extraordinary truth, although it can. More important is that fiction gives us eyes to see the transcendence of ordinary lives, including our own.”

Rural America as It Really Is

“Harold Bell Wright, regardless of how literary tastemakers viewed him in the 1920s, is the central figure in the origin of Branson. Though denigrated by the Baldwins and H. L. Menckens of his day, Wright was one of the century’s best-selling novelists.”

The Poet Watches Birds

“Jennifer A. Hartenburg’s debut collection of poems… offers such a poetic practice of waking, attending, and caring. These are poems rich with the life of the world, flocking with birds and bees both literal and metaphorical, but also closely attentive to the quiddities of language and the motions of the soul.”

Degrees of Uselessness

by RKC Staff | Apr 22, 2018

A Practical Education: Why Liberal Arts Majors Make Great Employees by Randall Stross. Redwood Press / Stanford University Press, 2017. Hardcover, 291 pages, $25. KEVIN P. SHIELDS In today’s business culture of globalization and specialization a traditional liberal...

Good Music and Christian Music

by RKC Staff | Apr 22, 2018

Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music? Larry Norman and the Perils of Christian Rock by Gregory Alan Thornbury. Convergent Books, 2018. Hardcover, 292 pages. $26. MARK HIJLEH Around 1542, Martin Luther complained, “Why is it that we have so many fine poems and...

The Religion of Human Rights

by Addison Del Mastro | Apr 22, 2018

The Debasement of Human Rights: How Politics Sabotage the Ideal of Freedom by Aaron Rhodes. Encounter Books, 2018. Hardcover, 280 pages, $28. Addison Del Mastro The Debasement of Human Rights, by human rights scholar and activist Aaron Rhodes, is really two books: one...

Vandenberg in Full: Babbitt No More

by Jon K. Lauck | Apr 22, 2018

Arthur Vandenberg: The Man in the Middle of the American Century by Hendrik Meijer. University of Chicago Press, 2017. Hardcover, 448 pages, $35. JON K. LAUCK From the Civil War until the World War II era the American Midwest region was central to American life, as...

Not Just Another World War Two Book

by RKC Staff | Apr 15, 2018

The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won by Victor Davis Hanson. Basic Books, 2017. Hardcover, 720 pages, $40. DAVID DE GREGORIO During a fireside chat on February 23, 1942, President Roosevelt asked his radio audience to follow along on...

The Naked Emperors

by Eve Tushnet | Apr 15, 2018

Jews Queers Germans: A Novel/History by Martin Duberman. Seven Stories Press, 2017. Paperback, 384 pages, $20. EVE TUSHNET Martin Duberman, in his recent “novel/history” Jews Queers Germans, rarely describes clothing. He describes, instead, physical attractiveness—the...

Why We Need Liverpool

by William Anthony Hay | Apr 15, 2018

WILLIAM ANTHONY HAY While traveling with Tsar Alexander and the allied army campaigning against Napoleon as Britain’s ambassador in 1813, the Earl of Aberdeen remarked that “the heroes we read of at a distance with respect dwindle into minor figures at a near...

The Wonder of Medieval Europe

by RKC Staff | Apr 14, 2018

The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God’s Holy Warriors by Dan Jones. Viking, 2017. Hardcover, 448 pages, $30. TIMOTHY D. LUSCH “Two types of humanity were the wonder of medieval Europe: the great saint and the great knight.” So declared Russell Kirk in his...

Not Only Narnia: Lewis as Political Thinker

by RKC Staff | Apr 8, 2018

The Intellectual World of C. S. Lewis by Alister E. McGrath. Wiley-Blackwell, 2014. Paperback, 191 pages, $36. C. S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law by Justin Buckley Dyer and Micah J. Watson. Cambridge University Press, 2016. Paperback, 160 pages, $27. GARY L....

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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.

Register for our next book gallery on June 22, 2026:
Russell Kirk On America: How to Understand the Legacy of 1776