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 ‘Woke’ History of Democracy

The ‘Woke’ History of Democracy

Toward Democracy: The Struggle for Self-Rule in European and American Thought by James T. Kloppenberg. Oxford University Press, 2016. Hardcover, 912 pages, $35. James Kloppenberg has produced an important artifact of contemporary intellectual life. Conservative...

What Exactly Do We Agree On?

What Exactly Do We Agree On?

“Oh, you snuck in so quietly,” she says, hurrying to help you find your name tag in a pile on a table in the hall of the University Club’s second floor. You are late, and so ascertain which door will let you in at the back and not the front by the speakers before you...

Saving What Is Lost

Saving What Is Lost

Five hundred years before Christ walked on earth Euripides was writing dramatic lines for Hecuba, Queen of Troy, in his Trojan Women. Thinking herself betrayed by the gods, she refuses them worship, yet as she grieves the death of her son, she utters a pagan attempt at a prayer:…

Greenspan’s Intermezzo

The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan by Sebastian Mallaby. Penguin Books, 2016, 2017. Paperback, 781 pages, $22. Gilbert NMO Morris Biography is an interplay of perceptible and surprising cross-currents, and the life of Alan Greenspan is no...

Conservative Fictions, Fictional Conservatism?

A conversation with Adam Bellow. A full transcript is below, and the unedited audio of this interview may be played or downloaded here (MP3, 27 MB, 27 minutes). Interviewed by MARK JUDGE Mark Judge: I am speaking with Adam Bellow, who is a well-known editor. He’s done...

The Meiji Restoration at 150

A critical gaze falls on Meiji sloganeering. JASON MORGAN In 1853, American ships under the command of U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Perry appeared in Uraga Bay off the coast of Japan. Their purpose was to deliver to the Japanese authorities a list of demands, couched...

The Duty to Rewrite History

Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian by Richard Aldous. W.W. Norton, 2017. Hardcover, 486 pages, $30. John C. Chalberg Early on in his magisterial biography of an “imperial historian,” biographer Richard Aldous asks a question that he never really answers: Was Arthur...

Hoffer and the True Believers

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer. Perennial Classics, 1960, 2010. Paperback, 192 pages, $15. PEDRO BLAS GONZÁLEZ The American philosopher Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) is a rare thinker. Hoffer is a philosopher in the classic sense...

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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