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.

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.”

How to Love What is Permanent

“Throughout the book, Gibbs pleads with his readers that we not only think of the soul in terms of salvation but also in terms of health. Good taste won’t save one’s soul. But it will nourish the soul and incline the soul towards virtue much more than the bad taste we will acquire from mediocre things.”

Personalism in the Age of AI

“Personalism is a philosophical movement that places the human person at the center of inquiry, affirming the inherent dignity, value, and uniqueness of each individual. While it spans both religious and secular traditions, its common thread is a commitment to defending the irreducible reality of the person in an age increasingly shaped by systems, technologies, and abstractions.”

Christopher Dawson and Pluralism

“In particular, I want to examine three aspects of Dawson’s thought: his conclusion that cultures, especially Western culture, historically have been pluralist; his contention that a pluralism of cultures preserves a sphere of freedom from dominant modern ideologies that would eliminate that freedom; and finally, Dawson’s conviction that a pluralist world represents a new opportunity for evangelization.”

Universal and Territorial: The American Republic

Symposium: Citizen, Community, and Welcoming the Stranger by Peter Augustine LawlerFrom my view, the two classic sources are G. K. Chesterton and Orestes Brownson. What Chesterton, our friendly and endlessly ironic English critic, saw in America was “the romance of...

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

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...

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...

The Book Gallery

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

There's still time to sign up to join the @KirkCenter for the McLellan Prizes Gala in DC on November 19 https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/2025-mclellan-prizes

In honor of longtime @ubookman editor Gerald J. Russello, enjoy this Russello Classic, "Christopher Dawson and Pluralism."

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