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.”

Lessons from a Failed Party?

John Pendleton Kennedy: Early American Novelist, Whig Statesman, & Ardent Nationalist by Andrew R. Black. Louisiana State University Press, 2016. Cloth, 343 pages, $48. Lawyer, professor, statesman, and cabinet official, John Pendleton Kennedy is best remembered...

Backcountry Wisdom from an Investment Banker

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance. Harper, 2016. Hardcover, 264 pages, $28. Whether or not Donald Trump self-destructs on the campaign trail this year, the wave of anger he’s been riding—like the wave enabling the recent...

The Latin Literature that almost Wasn’t

Beyond Greek: The Beginnings of Latin Literature by Denis Feeney. Harvard University Press, 2016. Hardcover, 400 pages, $35.If students of literature and the classics take anything for granted, it is the existence of the texts themselves, be they in the original Latin...

Birzer wins 2016 Paolucci Award

We congratulate Bradley J. Birzer, the 2016 recipient of the Henry and Anne Paolucci Book Award for his biography, Russell Kirk: American Conservative. This annual award from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute honors the best book that advances conservative...

Horror of Life

A conversation with Peter AckroydOver the course of a magisterial career in cinema that lasted six decades, Alfred Hitchcock directed fifty-two feature films. These included such titles as Vertigo, The Birds, Psycho, North By Northwest, Rope, and Strangers on a Train....

A Rebel Against Rebellion

Conversations with Roger Scruton by Roger Scruton and Mark Dooley. Bloomsbury Continuum, 2016. Hardcover, 213 pages, $28. Roger Scruton’s (b. 1944) conservatism has scandalized the bulk of the British intellectual community since the 1970s. This thinker and writer’s...

Books in Little: The Good Old Days of Publishing

Publishing: A Writer’s Memoir by Gail Godwin. Bloomsbury, 2015. Paperback, 224 pages, $16. Gail Godwin, a National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author, provides an insider’s perspective on the tumultuous journey of a career novelist in her latest...

The Art of Robotics

Beyond the Robot: The Life and Work of Colin Wilson by Gary Lachman. TarcherPerigee, 2016. Paperback, 416 pages, $26. On the heels of Colin Stanley’s anthology of Colin Wilson’s Collected Essays on Philosophers comes the first biography of Wilson since that writer’s...

The Return of Douglas MacArthur

In war, there is no substitute for victory.” “The lands touching the Pacific will determine the course of history for the next thousand years.” The United States, except for the 1991 Persian Gulf War, has not been victorious in war since World War II. Meanwhile,...

The Book Gallery

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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