The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Watch James Panero of the New Criterion discuss “The Urbanity of Russell Kirk” at the 2025 Gerald Russello Memorial Lecture.

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.”

Marxism and the Rising Generation

“Gonzalez and Gorka have performed an important service in bringing together a wide range of fact and theory and in establishing a coherent line stretching directly from Marx through many important figures to the present day.”

Cracking the Code to Civilization

“In a world flooded with online influencers, ‘red pill’ rhetoric, and algorithmic posturing, Newell offers something older, wiser, and far superior: a code of manliness rooted in the Western tradition of virtue, character, and service. His message is that true manliness is not a pose or performance; it is the integration of moral and intellectual excellence, what he calls ‘the manly heart.’”

France and the Problem of Abstraction

“…French people’s love for ideas, indeed for ideology, often puts them at odds with the pragmatic requisites of a mature democracy and with reality itself. France is, as she very aptly puts it, ‘a country of dreamers who fall into melancholy when reality catches up with them.’ But far from being merely a psychological explanation for French unhappiness, this idealism is the key to a political understanding of our complicated relationship with the very principle of democracy.”

Endo and the Challenge of Orthodoxy

Silence: A Novel by Shūsaku Endō, translated by William Johnston. Picador Modern Classics, 2016. Paperback, 212+xxvi pages, $16. When he was a boy, Japanese author Shūsaku Endō (1923–1996) converted to Roman Catholicism. He attended Tokyo’s Keio University after the...

A Guide to the Nightmare Countries

Horror: A Literary History edited by Xavier Aldana Reyes. The British Library, 2016. Hardcover, 232 pages, $30. Although superheroes and adolescent saviors have currently wrested pole position on screens and shelves from even vampires and zombies, horror is no longer...

The Art of Sinking in Poetry

The Billy Collins Experience by A. M. Juster. Kelsay Books, 2016. Paperback, 66 pages, $14. “Like most poets, I don’t know where I’m going.” In a fit of concision, the poet Billy Collins managed to define his aesthetic, and his career. Despite his modesty, he has...

Upcoming Lectures in New York

The University Bookman is joining Fordham University in hosting the award-winning poet and critic A. M. Juster on Monday, February 6, 2017 at 6:00pm on Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus (McMahon Hall, Rm. 109; use the entrance on West 60th Street and Columbus Avenue in...

Summoned to Greatness

A Torch Kept Lit: Great Lives of the Twentieth Century by William F. Buckley Jr., edited by James Rosen. Crown Forum, 2016. Hardcover, 336 pages, $22. Reviewed by William F. Meehan IIIWilliam F. Buckley Jr. had published forty-five books by the time his only volume...

Books in Little: Kauffman’s ‘Deplorable’ Americans

America First! Its History, Culture, and Politics by Bill Kauffman. Prometheus Books, 2016. Paperback, 390 pages, $18.In numerous books, and in the pages of The American Conservative, Bill Kauffman continues to develop his unique blend of radical localism and...

Digging Up the Bones of Empire

TO THE POINT: WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1969 We moderns still are uncovering the tremendous remains of the Roman Empire, which extended from what is now Iraq to what is now Scotland, and from what is now Morocco to what is now West Germany. What modern man cannot...

To Paradise, By Way of Kensal Green

The English Way: Studies in English Sanctity from St. Bede to Newman Edited by Maisie Ward, introduction by Bradley J. Birzer. Cluny Media, [1933] 2016. Paperback, 366 pages, $19. You might expect a book called The English Way: Studies in English Sanctity from Bede to...

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.

"Delsol’s analysis stands out for the breadth of its perspective. Her essay covers topics as varied as corporatism, the French love for status and strikes, immigration, religion and secularism, populism and the role of intellectuals, Jacobinism, and the EU..."

Cracking the Code to Civilization
@CliffordBates12 on "The Code of Man: Love, Courage, Pride, Family, Country" (2nd Edition) by @waller_newell

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