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.

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.”

How to Love What is Permanent

“Throughout the book, Gibbs pleads with his readers that we not only think of the soul in terms of salvation but also in terms of health. Good taste won’t save one’s soul. But it will nourish the soul and incline the soul towards virtue much more than the bad taste we will acquire from mediocre things.”

Personalism in the Age of AI

“Personalism is a philosophical movement that places the human person at the center of inquiry, affirming the inherent dignity, value, and uniqueness of each individual. While it spans both religious and secular traditions, its common thread is a commitment to defending the irreducible reality of the person in an age increasingly shaped by systems, technologies, and abstractions.”

Christopher Dawson and Pluralism

“In particular, I want to examine three aspects of Dawson’s thought: his conclusion that cultures, especially Western culture, historically have been pluralist; his contention that a pluralism of cultures preserves a sphere of freedom from dominant modern ideologies that would eliminate that freedom; and finally, Dawson’s conviction that a pluralist world represents a new opportunity for evangelization.”

The Remaining Western Illusion

Lies, Passions and Illusions: The Democratic Imagination in the Twentieth Century by François Furet. Chicago University Press, 2014. Hardcover, 128 pages, $20.By his own admission François Furet was a Tocquevillian. The label is important and elusive and, for a...

Walter Berns, RIP

Walter Berns, the great constitutional scholar and political theorist, passed away on Saturday, January 10, 2015 at the age of 95. Throughout his long and distinguished career as a scholar and pubic intellectual, a career that included teaching posts at Cornell, Yale,...

A Gentleman of Letters

Selected Letters of Norman Mailer Edited by J. Michael Lennon. Random House, 2014. Hardcover, 867 pages, $40. By any measure, Norman Mailer (1923–2007) is one of the most important writers of post-World War II America. Over seven decades, he produced powerful and...

On Looking for What We Have Been Given

“Giving one Catholicism, God deprives one of the pleasure of looking for it, but here again He has shown His mercy for such a one as myself … who, if it had not been given, would not have looked.” —Flannery O’Connor, September 24, 1947. A former student of mine from...

Fruits of Procrastination

One Hundred Letters from Hugh Trevor-Roper Edited by Richard Davenport-Hines and Adam Sisman. Oxford University Press, 2014. Hardcover, 488 pages, $40. Seemingly out of fashion in the internet age, letters have been an important literary genre since the days of St....

Children on the Menu

The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, translated and edited by Jack Zipes. Princeton University Press, 2014. Hardcover, 568 pages, $35.Jack Zipes, retired professor of German at the University...

The Bookman at Its Best

Dear Friends, This has been a wonderful year for the Bookman and our circle of friends, writers, and supporters. The Bookman published over a hundred reviews, essays, interviews, and symposia in 2014. Among them we would note the symposia we held on James Poulos’s...

Congratulations, Caleb!

Congratulations to Bookman contributor Caleb Stegall, who was selected for a seat on the Kansas Supreme Court. We wish him all the best.

In Search of Community

Community and Tradition: Conservative Perspectives on the American Experience, edited by George W. Carey and Bruce Frohnen. Rowman & Littlefield, 1998. Paper, 216pp., $23.This is a valuable and timely book, and a welcome reminder that the conservative mind is...

The Book Gallery

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

How to Love What is Permanent
Sarah Reardon on "Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity" by Joshua Gibbs.
@CirceInstitute

Personalism in the Age of AI Grant R. Martsolf on "Personalism for the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honor of David Walsh" Edited by Thomas W. Holman and Richard Avramenko.
@RLPublisher

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