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.

William F. Buckley Jr.: Literary Figure 

“…the American public intellectual might best be appreciated as a literary figure. Producing about 350,000 words for publication yearly at the peak of his career, Buckley was never at a loss for what to say or how to say it.”

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.”

Revisiting Walter Lippmann

“Lippmann sought to be—and was—what might be described today as an influencer. As such, he never sought to wield power, but he long desired to have the ears and eyes of the powerful. Arnold-Forster is certainly not unaware of that. But it is never his central message. If there is such a message in these pages, and there is, it is his effort to make the reader aware that Walter Lippmann, believer in and defender of the efficacy of progressive government, was also Walter Lippmann, believer in and defender of both the reality and importance of empire in general and of the American empire in particular.”

Family Homes and Drive-in Churches

“After the optimism of the suburban boom, it all went bust. Mass attendance fell by 70 percent. Women’s religious life died out. Parochial education was crippled… The green grass of suburbia was starved into a desiccated, brown waste.”

William F. Buckley Jr.: Literary Figure 

“…the American public intellectual might best be appreciated as a literary figure. Producing about 350,000 words for publication yearly at the peak of his career, Buckley was never at a loss for what to say or how to say it.”

What We’re Reading (Summer 2016)

From Newman to MacArthur and children’s drama to philosophy and poetry, our contributors and friends again provide their summer reading lists. Adam Schwartz C. S. Lewis once observed that a scholar’s professional and pleasure reading are often indistinguishable. I...

The Oral Tradition

The Oral Tradition

Robert Penn Warren Talking: Interviews 1950–1978, edited by Floyd C. Watkins and John T. Hiers. Random House, 1980. Hardcover, 289 pp., $12.95.In the six decades since he began attending meetings of the Fugitive group as a seventeen-year-old Vanderbilt sophomore,...

The Convict-Bourgeois

Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada, translated by Michael Hofmann. Melville House, 2010. Paperback, 544 pages, $17.There’s a four-page passage early on in Hans Fallada’s masterful 1937 novel Wolf Among Wolves in which we meet a policeman. At first Leo Gubalke is a...

Solzhenitsyn Interpreted

Solzhenitsyn Interpreted

Solzhenitsyn: The Moral Vision by Edward E. Ericson, Jr. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1980. Hardcover, 239 pages.Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has something important to say to mankind—this is generally conceded, even though there is little agreement on what he has to...

Upcoming APL Conference

The annual conference of the Academy of Philosophy and Letters will be held in Baltimore, MD on May 27–29. The theme for 2016 is “The Benedict Option: The Problems of Culture in Times of Crisis,” and there will also be a panel on “The Mecosta Option.” Bruce Frohnen...

Don’t Fret Too Much About Success

Opening Belle: A Novel by Maureen Sherry. Simon & Schuster, 2016 Hardcover, 338 pp., $25.Books, especially first novels by new novelists in search of an audience, are marketed with a singular purpose. In order to attract sales and readership, they are classified...

The Life of ‘Mere Christianity’

C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity: A Biography by George M. Marsden. Lives of Great Religious Books series. Princeton University Press,2016. Hardcover, 264 pages, $25.George M. Marsden, the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Notre...

The Genius of T. S. Eliot

TO THE POINT: THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 1965The gentleman and scholar who shyly dominated the republic of letters in Britain and America—Mr. T. S. Eliot—died a few days ago. Though we met only occasionally, sometimes in London and once in Edinburgh, there subsisted...

Finding Freedom in a Totalitarian Age

Eumeswil. By Ernst Jünger. Translated by Joachim Neugroschel. Introduction by Russell A. Berman. Telos Press, 2015. Paperback, 330 pages, $27. Ernst Jünger (1895–1998) was twentieth-century Germany’s most prolific writer. Throughout his long career he wrote novels,...

The Book Gallery

A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.

How to Love What is Permanent
Sarah Reardon on "Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity" by Joshua Gibbs.
@CirceInstitute

Personalism in the Age of AI Grant R. Martsolf on "Personalism for the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honor of David Walsh" Edited by Thomas W. Holman and Richard Avramenko.
@RLPublisher

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