The University Bookman
Reviewing Books that Build Culture
Endo and the Challenge of Orthodoxy
Silence: A Novel by Shūsaku Endō, translated by William Johnston. Picador Modern Classics, 2016. Paperback, 212+xxvi pages, $16. When he was a boy, Japanese author Shūsaku Endō (1923–1996) converted to Roman Catholicism. He attended Tokyo’s Keio University after the...
A Guide to the Nightmare Countries
Horror: A Literary History edited by Xavier Aldana Reyes. The British Library, 2016. Hardcover, 232 pages, $30. Although superheroes and adolescent saviors have currently wrested pole position on screens and shelves from even vampires and zombies, horror is no longer...
The Art of Sinking in Poetry
The Billy Collins Experience by A. M. Juster. Kelsay Books, 2016. Paperback, 66 pages, $14. “Like most poets, I don’t know where I’m going.” In a fit of concision, the poet Billy Collins managed to define his aesthetic, and his career. Despite his modesty, he has...
Upcoming Lectures in New York
The University Bookman is joining Fordham University in hosting the award-winning poet and critic A. M. Juster on Monday, February 6, 2017 at 6:00pm on Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus (McMahon Hall, Rm. 109; use the entrance on West 60th Street and Columbus Avenue in...
Summoned to Greatness
A Torch Kept Lit: Great Lives of the Twentieth Century by William F. Buckley Jr., edited by James Rosen. Crown Forum, 2016. Hardcover, 336 pages, $22. Reviewed by William F. Meehan IIIWilliam F. Buckley Jr. had published forty-five books by the time his only volume...
Books in Little: Kauffman’s ‘Deplorable’ Americans
America First! Its History, Culture, and Politics by Bill Kauffman. Prometheus Books, 2016. Paperback, 390 pages, $18.In numerous books, and in the pages of The American Conservative, Bill Kauffman continues to develop his unique blend of radical localism and...
Digging Up the Bones of Empire
TO THE POINT: WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1969 We moderns still are uncovering the tremendous remains of the Roman Empire, which extended from what is now Iraq to what is now Scotland, and from what is now Morocco to what is now West Germany. What modern man cannot...
To Paradise, By Way of Kensal Green
The English Way: Studies in English Sanctity from St. Bede to Newman Edited by Maisie Ward, introduction by Bradley J. Birzer. Cluny Media, [1933] 2016. Paperback, 366 pages, $19. You might expect a book called The English Way: Studies in English Sanctity from Bede to...
The Road to ‘Reunion’ Examined
Father Schall reviews a satirical essay from Ronald Knox on the union of world religions.
The Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.