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.
Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition … to Be Explained Fairly
Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History by Rodney Stark. Templeton Press, 2016. Hardcover, 280 pages, $28. Rodney Stark, while doing research into the history of religion, discovered that the popular history of Catholicism is rife with...
Books in Little: The Myth of Islamic Spain
The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain by Darío Fernández-Morera. ISI Books, 2016. Hardcover, 358 pages, $30. This is a brave book, and one must assume that its author is tenured, for the book...
Burke in Full
Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke by Richard Bourke. Princeton University Press, 2015. Hardcover, 1032 pages, $45.Twenty-five years ago, Conor Cruise O’Brien entertained Burke enthusiasts with The Great Melody: now Richard Bourke is presenting...
Dark Night, Black Hopes
The Death of Christian Culture, by John Senior. Arlington House, Publishers, 1978 [Revised edition, IHS Press, 2008]. Paperback, 192 pages, $29.The last year has brought us a number of books that ought to serve as town criers to the West. While we have had a veritable...
Books in Little: Modern Culture
An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Culture By Roger Scruton St. Augustine’s Press, 2000, New ed. 2016. Hardcover, 173 pp., $25. This slim volume is invaluable in setting forth clearly a critical overview of contemporary culture and cultural trends, and belongs on...
Anything but Bland Conformity
Collected Essays on Philosophers by Colin Wilson, edited by Colin Stanley. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016. Hardcover, 253 pages, $82. The British writer, thinker, and varsity intellectual nonconformist Colin Wilson (1931–2013) began his prolific authorial career...
The Enduring Wisdom of Bryce
The Hindrances to Good Citizenship, by James Bryce. Introduction by Howard G. Schneiderman. Transaction Publishers, 1993. 186 pp., $36. The most revealing fact in James Bryce’s study of the impediments to good citizenship in a democracy, which Howard G. Schneiderman...
A Forgotten American Horace
American Austen: The Forgotten Writing of Agnes Repplier by Agnes Repplier, Edited by John Lukacs. Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2009. Hardcover, 450 pages, $25. Who remembers Agnes Repplier? From her first essay in 1881 to her death in 1938 this half-Southern...
The Literary and Southern Schooling of ‘Mad Jack’ Randolph
The Education of John Randolph, by Robert Dawidoff. W. W. Norton & Co., 1979. Hardcover, 346 pp., $19.95. A good friend of mine, scion of an old Virginia family, when deep into his cups, regales me with stories of John Randolph of Roanoke. Late into the night,...
The Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.
