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.

From the Man Who Loved America

“Angelo Codevilla advanced and argued for an anti-Wilsonian approach to both American foreign and American domestic policy.”

Smithian Wisdom on Demand

“Even readers who disagree with the collection’s broad normative valence will find that it consistently models a way of reading Smith as a unified thinker about persons-in-society—morally formed agents embedded in evolving rules, conventions, and institutions.”

In Praise of Poetry and Form

“Majmudar often takes the long view, and from the long view, free verse is a new arrival in a variegated poetic history that stretches back into prehistory. To embrace it alone is to cut oneself off from that sweeping history and from the resources to be found there. There is still vitality in these neglected traditions. They are not a dead past.”

Four Federal Judges Celebrating Poetry at Poets House

Poets and critics oftencomplain that most contemporary American verse is beautiful but pointless. It is introspective, limited to the poet’s experiences or lack thereof, sometimes shrill, at times unintelligible. On Tuesday, October 20, 2015, four U.S. federal judges...

Pierre Manent’s Common Political Science

Seeing Things Politically: Interviews with Benedicte Delorme-Montini by Pierre Manent. St. Augustine’s Press, 2015. Hardcover, 240 pages, $30.   “Thomists have moralized and depoliticized Aristotle,” French Catholic philosopher Pierre Manent charges in his book,...

Risking Literature in the Obama Era

Bearings and Distances by Glenn Arbery. Wiseblood Books, 2015. Paperback, 335 pages, $13.To those who desire to think the same way others think, who long to crush dissent and to be on the right side of history, real literature is an oddity, an affront, the relic of an...

Fighting Cousins

Yanks and Limeys: Alliance Warfare in the Second World War. by Niall Barr. London: Jonathan Cape, 2015. Hardcover, 548 pages, $30. Reviewed by John P. Rossi It is generally agreed that World War II was a victory of Russian numbers and American industrial output. True...

The Uncozy Christie

A reflection on the underestimated Dame Agatha Christie at 125. Eve Tushnet Agatha Christie’s name is practically synonymous with comfort reading. Her publishers used to promise readers “a Christie for Christmas,” and her works are the inspiration for the mystery...

The Deauthorised Life of Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life by Jonathan Bate. Harper, 2015. Hardcover, 672 pages, $40.Every biography has a backstory involving how a biographer turns to a certain subject, what other biographies have been written, what sources are new or used differently....

Bradbury the Realist

Ray Bradbury by David Seed. Illinois University Press (Modern Masters of Science Fiction), 2015. Paperback, 207 pages, $24.Anything Martian is currently newsworthy—made so by NASA’s announcement that liquid water exists on the surface of the Red Planet, by various...

Are We a Nation of Heretics?

Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics by Ross Douthat. The Free Press, 2012 (2013). Paperback, 352 pages, $17. A few years ago, Ross Douthat, who has assumed the mantle of the conservative columnist at The New York Times, published Bad Religion: How We...

Permanence, Tradition, and Memory

Essays on Modernity: And the Permanent Things from Tradition by James A. Patrick, Introduced by Thomas Howard, Edited by B. R. Mullikin. Fort Worth: Tower Press Books, 2015. Hardcover, paperback, Kindle, 190 pages. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of attending one of...

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.

The first piece in our special series focusing on Russell Kirk’s work on America is out! https://kirkcenter.org/reviews/what-the-american-revolution-secured-order-justice-and-freedom/ thank you @lsheahan @ubookman

Load More

Shop through Regnery
Support the Kirk Center
& University Bookman