The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Join friends of the Bookman in New York City on December 8, 2025 for the Gerald Russello Memorial Lecture.

William F. Buckley Jr.: Literary Figure 

“…the American public intellectual might best be appreciated as a literary figure. Producing about 350,000 words for publication yearly at the peak of his career, Buckley was never at a loss for what to say or how to say it.”

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 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.”

Buckley and Edwards: The Titan of Conservatism and His Titan of a Biographer

“By examining the major individual intellectual influences in Buckley’s life, Edwards is able to organically put together the various strands and ideas that became known as ‘fusionism’ without a lengthy or pedantic philosophical explanation.”

Robert Nisbet’s The Social Philosophers Revisited: Conservative Pluralism versus the Mania for Unity

“…Nisbet shows that freedom and nobility (or excellence) can only survive when civic and social pluralism allows authentic human individuality and real (as opposed to ideologically-induced) community ample room to flourish.”

Planting

Only a man who remembers his debt to his ancestors is likely to plant for posterity. —Russell Kirk

Ruminations of a Small-Scale Forester

As I hope nearly everybody knows already, our American woodlands continue to diminish alarmingly. It is not only the big forests of the Pacific slopes, harvested by the great lumbering companies, that dwindle, or the swamp forests of the Gulf states and lower South:...

Turn Down Your Thermostat and Throw Away Your Gadgets

Strict rationing of fuel oil and perhaps of gasoline is an immediate prospect. Even were not America’s supplies of petroleum threatened by the war in the Levant, we still would be short of oil for this winter—and short of natural gas, too, and of electrical current....

Meditations at the Dump

I envy my stepmother. For she is chairwoman of the town dump of Baldwin, Michigan. This is by virtue of her recent election to the village board; also she has been appointed to the high dignity of chairwoman of parks and recreation. But I’ll take my recreation at the...

Conserving Nature in This Land

As I wander from state to state, speechifying on everything under the sun, I find that two subjects are most popular with lecture-audiences this year: sex and conservation. The former has always been with us, but the latter topic has taken on urgency, what with the...

The McKinley Mystery

President McKinley: Architect of the American Century by Robert W. Merry. Simon & Schuster, 2017. Hardcover, 624 pages, $35.This biography’s bold subtitle announces Robert W. Merry’s revisionist project. In the popular imagination, McKinley is a nondescript,...

Books in Little: The Disaffected

The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality by Justin Gest. Oxford University Press, 2016. Paper, xiii + 249 pages, $24.95The past year or so has seen the appearance of quite a few books dealing with the white poor and the...

Announcing Kirk on Campus

We are pleased to announce a web presence for Kirk on Campus, our new project that celebrates and defends the permanent things at America’s colleges and universities. As a unique source of cultural conservative thought, Kirk on Campus fills a critical niche in the...

The Book Gallery

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