The University Bookman
Reviewing Books that Build Culture
Of Human Nature and the Obligations of the State
Symposium: Citizen, Community, and Welcoming the Stranger By Bruce Frohnen We all share the same God-given nature. Along with that nature comes the right to be treated accordingly—that is, in accordance with our being, and our inherent, God-given dignity. Among the...

The Proxy War
Symposium: Citizen, Community, and Welcoming the Stranger by Daniel McCarthyThe fight over immigration is a proxy war. The absolute number of immigrants to be welcomed into the country is only a secondary question: the primary question is how that number should be...
Not Lucian’s Lucian
Lucian’s Dialogues of the Gods, translated by H. & F. Fowler & W. Tooke, edited by Nicholas Jeeves. PDR Press, 2016. Paperback, 149 pages, $14.Woe to the great comic authors of the ancient world, none of whom would be terribly good sources for a Boy Scouts of...
The Future of France
Faire by François Fillon. Albin Michel, 2015. Paper, 313 pages. Vaincre le totalitarisme Islamique by François Fillon. Albin Michel, 2016. Paper, 155 pages.Less than three weeks after Donald Trump was elected president, longtime French politician François Fillon won...
When Time Was Measured in Decades
Gonzáles discusses Spanish novelist Miguel Delibes and his 1964 work, Viejas historias de Castilla la Vieja.
Four Acres in Herefordshire
The Running Hare: The Secret Life of Farmland by John Lewis-Stempel. Doubleday, 2016. Hardcover, 298 pages, £16.99. “Really: I just want the birds back.” So concludes the brief preface/apologia of writer-farmer John Lewis-Stempel’s wonderful new book The Running Hare,...
Hitchens: A Look at a Skeptic
The Faith of Christopher Hitchens: The Restless Soul of the World’s Most Notorious Atheist by Larry Alex Taunton. Nelson Books, 2016. Hardcover, 199 pages, $15.Christopher Hitchens (a.k.a. “Hitch”) was a hard-drinking, heavy-smoking writer and public speaker with an...
An American Arcadia Made Accessible
The Brandywine: An Intimate Portrait by W. Barksdale Maynard. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. Hardcover, 276 pages, $34.95. When an author writes of a place that he or she loves, there is always the danger of slipping into an overly sentimental paean that...
Our Real Constitution—And What Happened to It
Constitutional Morality and the Rise of Quasi-Law By Bruce P. Frohnen and George W. Carey. Harvard University Press, 2016. Hardcover, 293 pages, $45.Conservatism lost a giant when George W. Carey passed away in 2013. Thanks to Bruce Frohnen, his longtime friend, we’re...
The Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.