The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Support the University Bookman during our annual Kirktober Fundraiser, and receive an audio copy of Kirk’s short story, What Shadows We Pursue.

Kirktober 2025: James Panero and Adam Simon on the Haunted House

October 28, 2025

On Tuesday, October 28, at 6:00 PM, you are invited to join University Bookman editor Luke Sheahan, Hollywood screenwriter Adam Simon, and New Criterion executive editor James Panero, as they explore the theme of the haunted house in gothic literature and its relationship to conservative thought and imagination.

Register for this free webinar here.

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.”

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.”

Trust and Hope as the Final Words

“Each poem is biblically rooted, but Kohler draws on extra-biblical sources and her own creative imagination to ponder what her characters may have been thinking during the pivotal moments of their mostly undocumented lives. The result is a beautiful exploration into the hearts and minds of the women of the Bible—both named and unnamed—that leaves readers feeling as though the women are imminently present, sharing their innermost thoughts and the overlooked aspects of their experiences.”

The Other Greek Woman

“Felson’s Penelope, who seems, in all probability, very close to Homer’s Penelope, is the faithful wife of Odysseus, but she is also the independent and flirtatious matriarch who rules over her household and teases the suitors, whom she views as her ‘geese.’”

Books in Little: Seven Prophets

American Prophets: Seven Religious Radicals and Their Struggle for Social and Political Justice by Albert J. Raboteau. Princeton University Press, 2016. Cloth, 248 pages, $30. One does not have to agree with the teachings of these seven “radicals” to be inspired by...

Beautiful Losers

Heroic Failure and the British by Stephanie Barczewski. Yale University Press, 2016. Hardcover, 280 pages, $40. The unquiet ghost of the British Empire haunts the globe. Because of their empire, English is spoken in cities around the world, from Atlanta to Zanzibar....

Balancing Happy and Real

Beneath Wandering Stars by Ashlee Cowles. Merit Press, 2016. Hardcover, 272 pages, $18. In today’s publishing landscape, Ashlee Cowles’s Beneath Wandering Stars is a rare contemporary Young Adult novel. It is worth our attention and promotion because it should not be...

2017 Burke Conference Announced

The Edmund Burke Society announces its next conference, to be held on 10-11 February 2017 at St John Fisher College in Rochester, New York. The theme for this gathering is “Edmund Burke and The Conservative Mind: Russell Kirk on the Burke Revival Then and Now.” The...

Conservative Crack-up, Republican Rout?

Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism by George Hawley. University Press of Kansas, 2016. Hardcover, 376 pages, $35.George Hawley has written a competent, respectable book on conflicts within America’s right wing concerning what is and is not acceptable...

On the Rise of the Enlightenment

A conversation with Anthony GottliebWestern philosophy is now two and a half millennia old. But a great deal of it arose in just two staccato bursts, lasting 150 years each. In a book he published in 2000 called The Dream of Reason, Anthony Gottlieb explained the...

The Immigrants from Hell

German Rocketeers in the Heart of Dixie: Making Sense of the Nazi Past During the Civil Rights Era by Monique Laney. Yale University Press, 2015. Hardcover, 320 pages, $35.On April 11, 1945, just short of a month before VE-day and the end of the conflict in Europe, a...

A Regionalist Tragedy

Shade of the Raintree: The Life and Death of Ross Lockridge, Jr., Author of Raintree County. by Larry Lockridge. Indiana University Press, 1994, 2014. Paperback, 544 pages, $25. I started with the obituary. It ran on the front page. Of the New York Times. Yes, the...

American Cassandra

American Burke: The Uncommon Liberalism of Daniel Patrick Moynihan by Greg Weiner. University Press of Kansas, 2015. Hardcover, 189 pages, $30.In a brief moment before the terrorist attacks of September 11, there was the glimmering of an argument for government...

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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