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.”

Robert Nisbet’s The Social Philosophers Revisited: Conservative Pluralism versus the Mania for Unity

“…Nisbet shows that freedom and nobility (or excellence) can only survive when civic and social pluralism allows authentic human individuality and real (as opposed to ideologically-induced) community ample room to flourish.”

The Social Philosophers: A Reading for the Present

“…in Nisbet’s reading, conflict fulfills a paradoxical function: it is, to a large extent, the experience of uprooting and rupture that most strongly awakens the need for community. In other words, the longing for community becomes more conscious and pressing where community has been lost or weakened.”

A Sociology of the Permanent Things: Nisbet’s Tocquevillian Philosophy

“The great crisis of our time, which Tocqueville prophesied and Nisbet diagnosed, is the collapse of those intermediary institutions that can resist the drift toward democratic despotism.”

Home, Sour Home

Home, Sour Home

“Beckeld finds oikophobia not only in the present-day United States but also across the West and in ancient Greece and Rome, eighteenth-century France, and twentieth-century Great Britain. Oikophobia’s onset is significant because it has weakened the places in which it appeared.”

Lincoln and the Democratic Cause

Lincoln and the Democratic Cause

“Professor Guelzo is prescient… in offering Lincoln’s contemplations on the meaning and purpose of the Civil War, including the possibility that the war was a providential necessity preceding an outcome, emancipation, and largely because race and slavery are central to Lincoln’s history as a great evil, our country’s original sin, and anathema to our democracy. “

JP O’Malley Interviews Author Frank Tallis

JP O’Malley Interviews Author Frank Tallis

“…is it possible to embrace Freud’s core ideas while also remaining critical of him? Tallis believes so. He claims Freud ‘was unquestionably a great writer, but he is often contradictory, and his ideas are generally not original.'”

Finding the Historical Vergil

Finding the Historical Vergil

“Sarah Ruden… takes a step back to remove Vergil from the constraints of later mythmaking and find the historical poet… As Ruden writes, ‘As always, there has to be something about the author himself that is vital to the thing called literary achievement.’”

America First—Or Last?

America First—Or Last?

“Paul Hollander, wherever he is, need not worry. The best book by far on an American romance with foreign dictators has long been–and remains–his Political Pilgrims.

The Soul Always Takes Priority

The Soul Always Takes Priority

“The book is a handbook for a Catholic death written by Nikolas T. Nikas, co-founder and president of the Bioethics Defense Fund, and Bruce W. Green, a former dean and law professor who serves as special counsel to the Bioethics Defense Fund. Presented in a Question and Answer format and split over eight parts, [it] offers answers to 123 questions a curious person might have… The appendices include, among other things, an essay on how to form a working conscience, a glossary, and an example of what a Catholic medical power of attorney might look like—useful for those who might not be able to afford to pay a lawyer to devise one for them. Reading the book is, quite literally, like having two lawyers explain the legal and moral ins and outs of end-of-life care.”

Early Modern Queens

Early Modern Queens

“…Leah Redmond Chang lifts the veil on three of the most important (female or otherwise) figures of the Renaissance: Mary, Queen of Scots, Catherine de Medici, and Catherine’s daughter, Elisabeth de Valois.”

The Waters of Ius and Freedom

The Waters of Ius and Freedom

“[Hawley] attempts to convince us that Cicero is an invaluable resource for an introduction to Western philosophy. He is the true republican symbol that links the common liberty of popular sovereignty to the private liberty of individuals.”

The Book Gallery

A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.

Conservative Pluralism versus the Mania for Unity
Daniel Mahoney on THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHERS by Robert Nisbet. Foreword by @lsheahan. @AmPhilSociety Press.

The Social Philosophers: A Reading for the Present
Lucía Vallejo Rodríguez on THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHERS by Robert Nisbet. Foreword by @lsheahan @AmPhilSociety Press.

Load More

Shop through Regnery
Support the Kirk Center
& University Bookman