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.”

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...

Modernists in Middle-Earth

Tolkien among the Moderns, edited by Ralph C. Wood. University of Notre Dame Press, 2015. Paperback, 303 pages, $32.I was first assigned to read J. R. R. Tolkien in 1968 when I was in the seventh grade. In that time of rage, rebellion, anxiety, and experimentation,...

Hope for a Conservative Remnant

The Conservative Rebellion by Richard Bishirjian. St. Augustine’s Press, 2015. Hardcover, 171 pages, $25. One of the more common definitions of conservatism as stated by its critics is that it is a philosophy enthralled with preserving the status quo. This definition...

A Modern Plutarch

The Road to Character by David Brooks. Random House, 2015. Hardcover, 320 pages, $28.David Brooks’s résumé confirms his place among America’s intellectual elite. Currently, he writes a column for The New York Times, teaches classes at Yale University, and regularly...

An Encounter with Ayn Rand

TO THE POINT: WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1, 1962Miss Ayn Rand is in the news nowadays. She has written two best-selling novels—Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead—and she has gotten up a curious philosophy which she calls “Objectivism.” Recently she and I, with some other...

RIP Justice Scalia

We marked the passing of Antonin Scalia with a tribute in the University Bookman. Justice Scalia wrote a letter to Annette Kirk in 2003 on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of The Conservative Mind, noting his admiration for Russell Kirk and his writings.

Antonin Scalia on Russell Kirk

The late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a letter to Annette Kirk on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of The Conservative Mind in 2003.Also see the 2016 tribute to Antonin Scalia in the University Bookman. In the summer of 2003, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia...

Reading Sowell in the Badlands

Wealth, Poverty, and Politics: An International Perspective by Thomas Sowell. Basic Books, 2015. Hardcover, 244 pages plus notes and index, $30. Last summer, after more than two decades in Northern Virginia, I moved with my family to Germantown in northwest...

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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