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.
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,...
A New Look at Benjamin Disraeli
Disraeli: The Novel Politician by David Cesarani. Yale University Press, 2016. Hardcover, 292 pages, $25. Reviewed by John P. Rossi Of the so-called “Victorian Giants”—William Ewart Gladstone, Lord Palmerston, Joseph Chamberlain—none have fascinated the public as much...
America’s Own Richard II
Being Nixon: A Man Divided by Evan Thomas. Random House, 2015. Hardcover, 619 pages, $35. The Nixon Effect: How Richard Nixon’s Presidency Fundamentally Changed American Politics by Douglas Schoen. Encounter Books, 2016. Hardcover, 384 pages, $27.“Even Richard Nixon...
Enlarging Emily Dickinson
A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century by Jerome Charyn. Bellevue Literary Press, 2016. Paperback, 255 pages, $20. The first part of Jerome Charyn’s title alludes to one of Emily Dickinson’s most enigmatic and powerful poems, which begins, “My Life had...
A Novel Out of Time
Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin. Translated by Lisa Hayden. Oneworld Publications, 2015. Cloth, 352 pages, $25. In an interview with Rod Dreher, Eugene Vodalazkin, author of the novel Laurus, says that he wanted to write about something good. In the same interview he...
On Looking for What We Have Been Given
“Giving one Catholicity, God deprives one of the pleasure of looking for it but here again He has shown His mercy for such a one as myself … who, if it had not been given, would not have looked.” —Flannery O’Connor, September 24, 1947, from A Prayer Journal (2013)A...
The Many Dimensions of Charles Williams
Charles Williams: The Third Inkling by Grevel Lindop. Oxford University Press, 2015. Cloth, xx + 493 pp., $35.Acclaimed in his day by the likes of W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, and Dorothy L. Sayers, Charles Williams (1886–1945) suffered a...
The Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.
