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.”

Revisiting Walter Lippmann

“Lippmann sought to be—and was—what might be described today as an influencer. As such, he never sought to wield power, but he long desired to have the ears and eyes of the powerful. Arnold-Forster is certainly not unaware of that. But it is never his central message. If there is such a message in these pages, and there is, it is his effort to make the reader aware that Walter Lippmann, believer in and defender of the efficacy of progressive government, was also Walter Lippmann, believer in and defender of both the reality and importance of empire in general and of the American empire in particular.”

Family Homes and Drive-in Churches

“After the optimism of the suburban boom, it all went bust. Mass attendance fell by 70 percent. Women’s religious life died out. Parochial education was crippled… The green grass of suburbia was starved into a desiccated, brown waste.”

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.”

The Epistolary Petrarch

Selected Letters: Volumes I & II by Francesco Petrarca, translated and edited by Elaine Fantham. Harvard University Press, 2017. Hardcover, 800 + 816 pages, $30 + $30.Contemporary readers of poetry tend to underestimate the power and influence of the Canzoniere of...

A New Look at Ransom’s ‘Land’

Land!: The Case for an Agrarian Economy by John Crowe Ransom. Edited by Jason Peters, with an Introduction by Jay T. Collier. University of Notre Dame Press, 2017. Cloth, 156 pages, $25. In Land!, his classic statement of agrarian economic thought, John Crowe Ransom...

Constitutionalism, Both Good and Horrid

Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from America’s Origins to the Twenty-First Century by Geoffrey R. Stone. Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017. Cloth, 669 pages, $35.Geoffrey Stone is very like the proverbial little girl with the curl in the middle...

In the Ruins, Hope

The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation by Rod Dreher. Sentinel, 2017. Hardcover, 272 pages, $25.Rod Dreher has been calling for Christians to heal themselves, their churches, and their communities, for most of his adult life. One...

Elites and the Future of France

Le crépuscule de la France d’en haut by Christophe Guilluy. Flammarion, 2016. Paper, 253 pages, $45. Reviewed by Eamon Moynihan The year 2017 is the two hundredth anniversary of the publication of the classic work by British financier David Ricardo, On the Principles...

Peter Augustine Lawler, RIP

Peter Augustine Lawler, RIP

Peter Lawler was not a Southern Gentleman. But he was a southerner and he was, in every important respect, a gentleman. Kind, courteous, and insistent that public discourse and private interactions both be conducted with decency and civility, he earned many friends in...

Lecture on Kirk’s Fiction

In April the Kirk Center hosted Jeffrey Dennis Pearce, a history teacher and the creator and editor of Ghostly Kirk, a web page dedicated to the ghostly fiction of Russell Kirk. Pearce gave a lecture on “Virtue in Two Ghostly Tales of Russell Kirk,” which was later...

The Book Gallery

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

How to Love What is Permanent
Sarah Reardon on "Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity" by Joshua Gibbs.
@CirceInstitute

Personalism in the Age of AI Grant R. Martsolf on "Personalism for the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honor of David Walsh" Edited by Thomas W. Holman and Richard Avramenko.
@RLPublisher

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