The University Bookman
Reviewing Books that Build Culture
Support the University Bookman during our annual Kirktober Fundraiser, and receive an audio copy of Kirk’s short story, What Shadows We Pursue.
Kirktober 2025: James Panero and Adam Simon on the Haunted House
October 28, 2025
On Tuesday, October 28, at 6:00 PM, you are invited to join University Bookman editor Luke Sheahan, Hollywood screenwriter Adam Simon, and New Criterion executive editor James Panero, as they explore the theme of the haunted house in gothic literature and its relationship to conservative thought and imagination.
Register for this free webinar here.
Our Second Bookman e-Book!
We are pleased to announce the release of The University Bookman on Edmund Burke, now available for Kindle. Collecting 21 reviews, essays, and interviews from the Bookman on the life and thought of Edmund Burke, this book is only $2.99, and purchases support our...
A Cause Lost—and Forgotten
Lessons from Mary Ward and the Women’s Anti-Suffragist Movement Helen Andrews When the fight in Britain over women’s suffrage came to an end with the passage of the Representation of the People Act 1918, which enfranchised property-holding women over thirty, Mary...
In Communion with All the Past
David Jones in the Great War by Thomas Dilworth. Enitharmon Press (London), 2012. Cloth, 228 pp., £15.Nearly four decades after he left the trenches, the Anglo-Welsh poet-painter David Jones (1895–1974) declared that “the forward area of the West Front had a permanent...
On Merriment
On Saturday, 26 May 1759, Samuel Johnson wrote an untitled essay in The Idler. It begins: “Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought.” This reminded me of hearing a joke for the second time, one told by someone else, but one you knew by heart. It is true that...
Virtue, Family, and Community
The Republic of Virtue by Paul Lake. University of Evansville Press, 2013. Hardcover, 80 pages, $15. The title poem of Paul Lake’s The Republic of Virtue begins like Genesis. “In Year One,” he writes, “the month of Vintage, time began.” Instead of the Spirit of God...
Recovering the Esoteric Reader
Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing by Arthur M. Melzer. University of Chicago Press, 2014. Hardcover, 464 pages, $45.It sounded like jabberwocky to some, but then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s distinction between “known...
America’s First Public Intellectual
Selected Writings of Thomas Paine Edited by Ian Shapiro and Jane E. Calvert. Yale University Press, 2014. Paperback, 676 pages, $18. In his lively introduction to this new edition of Paine’s legendary writings, Yale political scientist Ian Shapiro calls Thomas Paine...
Dinner with Aristotle
The Virtues of the Table: How to Eat and Think, by Julian Baggini. Granta Books, 2014. Paper, 280 pages, $14. There are few areas of life as difficult to navigate or moderate as eating. It’s necessary for existence—one of the most primal acts in which we partake. And...
Is the Use of Religious Rhetoric by Presidents Effective?
God Wills It: Presidents and the Political Use of Religion by David O’Connell. Transaction, 2014. Hardcover, 452 pp., $54.95.David O’Connell’s God Wills It: Presidents and the Political Use of Religion is a thoughtful, engaging, but ultimately unconvincing examination...
The Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.
