The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

What the American Revolution Secured: Order, Justice, and Freedom

Throughout the semiquincentennial year celebrating America’s independence, The University Bookman will invite a range of writers and speakers to contribute to a series drawing upon Russell Kirk’s work on the American Revolution and the constitutional order it secured.

Britain at the Turning Point

“A major theme that runs through Allport’s study is the shifting equilibrium of power relations between the United States and Britain. The war demonstrated that, as British power and resources dwindled, Britain became dependent on material and financial supplies from the United States.”

Shakespeare Forever

“…in his rich and thorough exploration of not only Shakespeare’s thoughts but also the course of Western thinking, David Womersley demonstrates that ideas do matter, and that Shakespeare is bigger than the harsh but ultimately timid emotions of our age.”

The Innocence of Imagination

“…the innocence that Blake’s poetry sings of is the awe, wonder, and imagination of a child who can conceive of boundless relationships with everything from a flower or butterfly to sister, brother, mother, and father. ‘Growing up,’ Vernon writes in addressing Blake’s poetic philosophy of innocence and imagination, ‘need not mean losing innocence and wonder.’ In fact, a mature innocence that can blend realism with imaginative creativity is key to a good and joyful life.”

The Fragility of Peace

by Staff | Oct 23, 2016

Pax Romana: War, Peace and Conquest in the Roman World by Adrian Goldsworthy. Yale University Press, 2016. Hardcover, 528 pages, $32.50. Historians, journalists, and amateur commentators over the last century have found in the Roman Empire a ready-made comparison for...

Is a Christian Society Possible?

by Jeremy A. Kee | Oct 20, 2016

Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society by R. R. Reno. Regnery, 2016. Hardcover, 256 pages, $28. In late February, 1943, C. S. Lewis delivered a series of three evening lectures at the King’s College, Newcastle, that later became the book titled The...

The Dread Beneath

by Carl Rollyson | Oct 16, 2016

The War of the Worlds: From H. G. Wells to Orson Welles to Jeff Wayne, Steven Spielberg and Beyond by Peter J. Beck. Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. Paper, 408 pages, $30. No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being...

Watching Shadows

by Staff | Oct 9, 2016

Gnomon: Essays on Contemporary Literature by Hugh Kenner. Dalkey Archive Press, 2016 (Originally McDowell, Oblensky: 1958). Paper, 302 pages, $18.Remember the literature anthology? A brick of onion-thin pages so immense it could ballast a book bag for a day’s worth of...

Solidarity Against the Present Discontent

by Staff | Oct 2, 2016

The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies by Ryszard Legutko, with a foreword by John O’Sullivan. Encounter Books, 2016. Hardcover, 182 pages, $24. The Polish philosopher, and sometime politician, Ryszard Legutko, has written a book of...

Epic, Rock, Camp, and Beowulf

by A. M. Juster | Sep 29, 2016

Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage by Jason Craig and Dave Malloy. Trinity Repertory Company, Providence, RI. Run: September 8–October 9, 2016. America lacks a national epic that helps to define our national identity. In English we inherited from the British two...

A Nearly Essential Goethe

by Staff | Sep 25, 2016

The Essential Goethe by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, edited and introduced by Matthew Bell. Princeton University Press, 2016. Hardcover, 1056 pages, $40. What other writer in the history of the world, not just Germany, has covered as much territory in his writing as...

The Last Pratchett

by Peter Edman | Sep 21, 2016

The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett. HarperCollins, 2015. Hardcover, 288 pages, $19.An agnostic friend once divided the science fiction novels of Ursula LeGuin into “Good Ursula” and “Bad Ursula”—by which he meant whether or not her didacticism hijacked her story....

Henry George, Anti-Statist

by Staff | Sep 18, 2016

Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality: Progress and Poverty in the Gilded Age by Edward T. O’Donnell. Columbia University Press, 2015. Hardcover, 376 pages, $38. Historian Edward O’Donnell’s Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality is a fascinating, if...

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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.

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