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.”

Heroism Was Still Possible

¡No Pasarán!: Writings from the Spanish Civil War edited by Pete Ayrton. Pegasus, 2016. Hardcover, 448 pages, $26. Reviewed by Helen Andrews Let it stand uncontested that the term “cultural appropriation” is political correctness of the cheapest and most manipulative...

Passos and Century’s End

Passos and Century’s End

Century’s Ebb: The Thirteenth Chronicle by John Dos Passos. Gambit, 1975. Hardcover, 474 pages. Publico ergo damnatus. —John Dos Passos, May 23, 1970 Reviewed by Pedro Blas González John Rodrigo Dos Passos (1896-1970) is a writer with an expansive view of man, of...

Fall Newsletter features new Society for Law and Culture

The Fall 2016 Permanent Things features news of the inaugural conference of a new Kirk Center initiative, the Society for Law and Culture; an emerging partnership with the new publishing house, Cluny Media; and news of other recent events and publications.

A Samurai’s Hidden Gospel

A Christian Samurai: The Trials of Baba Bunkō by William J. Farge, SJ; Foreword by Kevin M. Doak. The Catholic University of America Press, 2016. Hardcover, 336 pages, $35. For decades, the standard American academic treatment of Japanese Christianity has been that...

Taking Things as They Are

Mr. Blue by Myles Connolly with an introduction by Stephen Mirarchi. Cluny Media, 2015. Paper, 198+xiv pages, $18. This new edition of Myles Connolly’s 1928 Catholic novella Mr. Blue invites comment on the state of relations between Roman Catholicism and American...

Sightings of an Endangered Species

Poetry Night at the Ballpark and Other Scenes from an Alternative America: Writings, 1986–2014 by Bill Kauffman. Front Porch Republic Books, 2015. Paperback, 442 pages, $51.To say that Bill Kauffman’s collection of essays, Poetry Night at the Ballpark, comes from a...

Books in Little: Those Intolerable Christians

Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World by Larry W. Hurtado. Baylor University Press, 2016. Hardback, 304 pages, $30. In his well-received and influential works, How on Earth did Jesus Become a God?: Historical Questions about...

Kirk and the Hope for Recovery

Enemies of the Permanent Things: Observations of Abnormity in Literature and Politics by Russell Kirk, with an introduction by Benjamin G. Lockerd. Cluny Media, 2016. Paper, 399 pages, $20. At the apex of the mid-twentieth-century Youth Movement, the year 1969 marked...

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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