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.”

De Animali Ambulante

On Looking: A Walker’s Guide to the Art of Observation by Alexandra Horowitz. New York: Scribner 2011. Paperback, 320 pages, $16.“We walk the same block as dogs yet see different things. We walk alongside rats though each of us lives in the dusk of the other. We walk...

An Adaptable Conservative

Germaine de Staël: A Political Portrait by Biancamaria Fontana. Princeton UP, 2016. Hardcover, 296 pages, $35.“You want to repeal Obamacare? I thought you believed in, you know, conserving things.” “I just want to make marriage more relevant to twenty-first-century...

Testimony to a Catholic Existentialist

Testimony to a Catholic Existentialist

Renée Radell: Web of Circumstance by Eleanor Heartney. Predmore Press, 2016. Hardcover, 220 pages, $80. When I was an undergraduate student I had the privilege of working as an assistant to the founder of this journal, Russell Kirk. One of my tasks was helping him to...

Strange Thing: How Camus Wrote ‘The Stranger’

Looking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic by Alice Kaplan. University of Chicago Press, 2016. Hardcover, 288 pages, $26. The French philosopher Gabriel Marcel wrote in The Philosophy of Existentialism that Jean-Paul “Sartre’s world is...

Books in Little: End of an Era

This Gulf of Fire: The Great Lisbon Earthquake, or Apocalypse in the Age of Science and Reason by Mark Molesky. Alfred A. Knopf, 2015. Hardcover, 512 pages, $35. Despite its status as one of history’s most powerful tremors, the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 has barely...

Glimpses of a Great Light

Ronald Knox: A Man for All Seasons edited by Francesca Bugliani Knox. PIMS, 2016. Hardcover, 416 pages, $65.Jesus said only a fool would light a candle and proceed to hide it under a bowl. Yet time, even more than neglect or abuse, has a way of snuffing out even the...

A Splendid Retelling

Never Surrender: Winston Churchill and Britain’s Decision to Fight Nazi Germany in the Fateful Summer of 1940 by John Kelly. Scribner, 2015. Hardcover, 384 pages, $30.Winston Churchill believed that fate had placed him at the head of Britain’s government at its hour...

Reclaiming the ‘Higher’ in Higher Education

American Heresies and Higher Education by Peter Augustine Lawler. St. Augustine’s Press, 2016. Paperback, 224 pages, $20.Any appreciator of permanent and higher things who has gone to the university has very likely encountered the ugliness of political correctness,...

On Not Conserving Liberalism

Conserving America?: Essays on Present Discontents by Patrick J. Deneen. St. Augustines Press, 2016. Paper, 192 pages, $19.The title of the book—Conserving America?—tells us much of what we need to know about Deneen’s thesis. For much of conservative intellectual...

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