The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

The Urbanity of Russell Kirk

“The urban fabric must also be mended and darned through continuous upkeep. The city is not yours to experiment. From Russell to Russello, our ancestral spirits cast their shadows whether or not we choose to observe the city of god in the cities of men.”

What the American Revolution Secured: Order, Justice, and Freedom

Throughout the semiquincentennial year celebrating America’s independence, The University Bookman will invite a range of writers and speakers to contribute to a series drawing upon Russell Kirk’s work on the American Revolution and the constitutional order it secured.

From the Man Who Loved America

“Angelo Codevilla advanced and argued for an anti-Wilsonian approach to both American foreign and American domestic policy.”

Smithian Wisdom on Demand

“Even readers who disagree with the collection’s broad normative valence will find that it consistently models a way of reading Smith as a unified thinker about persons-in-society—morally formed agents embedded in evolving rules, conventions, and institutions.”

Digital and the Return of the Real

The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter by David Sax. PublicAffairs, 2016. Hardcover, 304 pages, 25. Reviewed by Gracy Olmstead In the popular 2014 film The Hundred-Foot Journey, Indian immigrant Hassan Kadam journeys from his homeland to the French...

A Testament of Faith and Service

Last Testament by Benedict XVI with Peter Seewald, translated by Jacob Phillips. Bloomsbury Continuum, 2016. Hardcover, 288 pages, $24.Those who have a close affinity with Pope Benedict XVI often wait eagerly for news of the man who did so much to shape the...

Latin Einstein on the Beach

Ossa Latinitatis Sola, or, The Mere Bones of Latin According to the Thought and System of Reginald by Reginald Thomas Foster and Daniel Patrick McCarthy. Catholic University of America Press, 2016. Paperback, 800 pages, $40.The first time I went to the beach with...

A Flawed and Fascinating Man

Diary 1954 by Leopold Tyrmand. Northwestern University Press, 2014. Paperback, 400 pages, $28.A few months ago, a small piece of history arrived in the post. It was a window that allowed us to catch a glimpse of the world of the Polish People’s Republic: Diary 1954,...

Books in Little: Austen’s Catholic Landscapes

Jane Austen and the Reformation: Remembering the Sacred Landscape by Roger E. Moore. Ashgate Publishing Company, 2016. Hardcover, x + 167 pages, $149.95Since Marilyn Butler’s Jane Austen and the War of Ideas appeared in 1975 there has been much written about Miss...

Unwearying Aphorisms

Doublethink/Doubletalk: Naturalizing Second Thoughts & Twofold Speech by Eva Brann. Paul Dry Books, 2016. Paper, 311 pages, $20.In many ways, our civilization seems weary, lacking a youthful confidence in its principles and promises. Perhaps no institution...

Where Love Lies Corrupt

Tyrants: A History of Power, Injustice, and Terror by Waller R. Newell. Cambridge University Press, 2016. Hardcover, 264 pages, $30. Russell Kirk, writing in Prospects for Conservatives, described what enlightened conservatives know but the tyrant does not: that love...

Against the Tyranny of Feelings

The State of the American Mind: 16 Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism edited by Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow. Templeton Press, 2015. Hardcover, 280 pages, $28.Nearly three decades after Allan Bloom pronounced the “Closing of the American Mind,” Mark...

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...

The Book Gallery

A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition. Click on the icon in the upper right corner of the video to see more episodes in this series or check out our YouTube page.

I have a review at the University Bookman (@KirkCenter) today of @AmitMajmudar's The Great Game: Essays on Poetics (@acre_books). Check it out 👇.

"No one...takes poetic hairpin turns at speed like Majmudar does. His poems are full of sonic swerves and surprises..."

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