The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Watch James Panero of the New Criterion discuss “The Urbanity of Russell Kirk” at the 2025 Gerald Russello Memorial Lecture.

The Urbanity of Russell Kirk

“The urban fabric must also be mended and darned through continuous upkeep. The city is not yours to experiment. From Russell to Russello, our ancestral spirits cast their shadows whether or not we choose to observe the city of god in the cities of men.”

Marxism and the Rising Generation

“Gonzalez and Gorka have performed an important service in bringing together a wide range of fact and theory and in establishing a coherent line stretching directly from Marx through many important figures to the present day.”

Cracking the Code to Civilization

“In a world flooded with online influencers, ‘red pill’ rhetoric, and algorithmic posturing, Newell offers something older, wiser, and far superior: a code of manliness rooted in the Western tradition of virtue, character, and service. His message is that true manliness is not a pose or performance; it is the integration of moral and intellectual excellence, what he calls ‘the manly heart.’”

France and the Problem of Abstraction

“…French people’s love for ideas, indeed for ideology, often puts them at odds with the pragmatic requisites of a mature democracy and with reality itself. France is, as she very aptly puts it, ‘a country of dreamers who fall into melancholy when reality catches up with them.’ But far from being merely a psychological explanation for French unhappiness, this idealism is the key to a political understanding of our complicated relationship with the very principle of democracy.”

On Not Being Boring

Acedia and its Discontents: Metaphysical Boredom in an Empire of Desire by R. J. Snell. Angelico Press, 2015. Paperback, 144 pages, $15.R. J. Snell has written a substantial and illuminating book, using the ancient concept of the vice of acedia (spiritual or...

Re-introducing Japan’s Conservatives

Japan’s Love-Hate Relationship with the West by Hirakawa Sukehiro. Global Oriental (Kent, UK), 2005. Hardcover, 400 pages, $90. Conservatives are often portrayed as an insular lot. Blinded by tradition and preternaturally bigoted in constitution, so goes the standard...

‘Et tu, Brute?’

Julius Caesar was killed on the famous Ides of March, the fifteenth of that month, 44 B.C. The murder took place in the Senate, then meeting in the Theater of Pompey. Caesar had acquired dictatorial powers. Technically, the office of “dictator” was a legal one. It was...

Complicating the Nixon Story

The President and the Apprentice: Eisenhower and Nixon, 1952–1961 by Irwin F. Gellman. Yale University Press, 2015. Hardcover, 791 pages, $40.The historical demonization of Richard Nixon usually proceeds from his supposedly red-baiting campaigns for the House and...

Who Governs the World?

Chi governa il mondo? by Sabino Cassese. Bologna: il Mulino, 2013. Paperback, 138 pages, $21.57. English edition: The Global Polity: Global Dimensions of Democracy and the Rule of Law. Sevilla: Global Law Press/Editorial Derecho Global, 2012. Etext, free.“‘Who gave...

A Terrible Beauty

Displacement by Derek Turner. Endeavour Press, 2015. E-book, 1054 Kb, $3. The huge majority of novelists who set themselves up as radicals are really anything but. It’s been observed that, with authors like Nabokov, the last literary taboos were broken, and all...

Resisting Delusions

Chance or Reality and Other Essays by Stanley L. Jaki. University Press of America, 1986. 258 pp., $14.50 paper.The dominant pathological feature of our times often seems an adulation of growth. That bigger is better and that the self is to be fulfilled are...

A Literary Bloodhound Tracks Eliot

Young Eliot: From St. Louis to The Waste Land by Robert Crawford. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015. Hardcover, 493 + xvi pages, $35. As I finished this prodigious tome about “Tom,” a painful question came to mind. What American could have pulled it off? The ideal...

Learning What We Don’t Know

The Risk of Reading: How Literature Helps Us to Understand Ourselves and the World by Robert P. Waxler. Bloomsbury, 2014. Paper, 191 pages, $30. I begin with a trigger warning. The following review contains references that could evoke strong feelings about the nature...

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.

Me happily @LawLiberty. Why Robert Nisbet matters as much now as he ever did.

@IVMiles @TheRightsWriter @DanJTPitt @ToryAnarchist @DanHugger @lsheahan @KirkCenter @ubookman @heymiller @Hillsdale @ScotBertram

Hace unos meses tuve el placer de reseñar la nueva edición de "The Social Philosophers" de Robert Nisbet. Lo mejor: se publica en un espacio de referencia para mi @ubookman
Ojalá pronto veamos más obras de este gran sociólogo traducidas en España https://goo.su/5eNFJ

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