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.”

‘It Was the End of Solo Singing’

The Cypresses Believe in God by José María Gironella. Ignatius, [1953] 2005. Paper, 900 pages.When Eric Hobsbawm suggested that the period 1914–1991 could be called “the short twentieth century,” he not only defined an era but separated it from our own. Few conflicts...

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Wallace Stevens

The Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace Stevens by Paul Mariani Simon & Schuster, 2016. Hardcover, 483 pages, $30. When Wallace Stevens was seventy-two, he received the Robert Frost Gold Medal from the Poetry Society of America. In his remarks, he gave an ethical...

American Imperialism and Its Discontents

The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of the American Empire by Stephen Kinzer. Henry Holt, 2017. Hardcover, 306 pages, $28. As the subtitle suggests, this is a book about personality and politics, a group biography with a large cast, including...

A Fine Closet of Curiosities

In Search of Sir Thomas Browne: The Life and Afterlife of the Seventeenth Century’s Most Inquiring Mind by Hugh Aldersey-Williams. Norton, 2015. Hardcover, 352 pages, $27.Reading Sir Thomas Browne’s unique prose reminds me of walking through the Pitt Rivers Museum in...

Doing Justice to Complexity

Coleridge and the Conservative Imagination by Alan P. R. Gregory. Mercer University Press, 2003. Hardcover, 300 pages, $35.50. “From a popular philosophy and a philosophic populace, Good Sense deliver us!” So Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes in his Lay Sermons, which...

Ringing the Alarm for Hope

Strangers in a Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World by Charles J. Chaput. Henry Holt and Company, 2017. Hardcover, 288 pages, $26.“If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention.” So goes a popular bumper sticker displayed by...

Holding on to Hope

Out of the Ashes by Anthony Esolen. Regnery Publishing, 2017. Hardcover, 203 pages, $18. The year was 1974, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was well into his decades-long exile from Mother Russia after having been subjected to the Gulag for possessing the audacity to...

Robert F. Kennedy and Our Times

Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon by Larry Tye. Random House, 2016. Hardcover, 580 pages, $32.The year 1968 is sometimes invoked in comparison to our current situation. It can serve both as a warning of what serious civil strife looks like in the United...

Searching for the Christian Mind

Liberal Learning and the Great Christian Traditions. Edited by Gary W. Jenkins and Jonathan Yonan. Pickwick Publications, 2015. Paperback, 168 pages, $22. The reality and definition of the “Christian mind” has become rather tenuous. There are different points of...

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

Load More

Shop through Regnery
Support the Kirk Center
& University Bookman