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.”

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...

On Play and Seriousness

Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture by Johan Huizinga. Beacon, 1950.“We must emphasize once again that play does not exclude seriousness.” —Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 1938. The classical Latin adjectives that we see associated with the Latin noun...

Judges and Dons

Divergent Paths: The Academy and the Judiciary by Richard Posner. Harvard University Press, 2016. Hardcover, 432 pages, $30.For a still-active judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit who “moonlights” as a law professor, Richard Posner is oddly and...

Memory and Mythmaking

The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939–1945 (Citizens and Soldiers) By Nicholas Stargardt Basic Books, 2015. Hardcover, 704 pp., $35. At the end of 1999, Time named Albert Einstein as “Person of the Century.” At a New Year’s Eve celebration held in a German castle...

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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