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.

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.”

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.”

Trust and Hope as the Final Words

“Each poem is biblically rooted, but Kohler draws on extra-biblical sources and her own creative imagination to ponder what her characters may have been thinking during the pivotal moments of their mostly undocumented lives. The result is a beautiful exploration into the hearts and minds of the women of the Bible—both named and unnamed—that leaves readers feeling as though the women are imminently present, sharing their innermost thoughts and the overlooked aspects of their experiences.”

The Other Greek Woman

“Felson’s Penelope, who seems, in all probability, very close to Homer’s Penelope, is the faithful wife of Odysseus, but she is also the independent and flirtatious matriarch who rules over her household and teases the suitors, whom she views as her ‘geese.’”

Yuval Levin’s Stirring Defense of the Constitution

Yuval Levin’s Stirring Defense of the Constitution

“[Levin] believes that, far from being the source of our problems, the American Founding can teach us the best solution to our present discontent. To deal with the growing crisis of faith, he directs our attention to the wisdom at the heart of the Constitution.”

“Putting Civil Back in Civilization”

“Putting Civil Back in Civilization”

“Hudson urgently reminds us that if we cannot live civilly with one another, we may have reached the limits of our democratic ‘proposition,’ as Lincoln called it. Hudson has rightfully re-introduced civility into our vocabulary and, in doing so, raises an inspirational ideal and draws a ‘line-in-the-sand’ by which to judge behavior.”

Here’s Why Not

Here’s Why Not

“Goligher sets this Christian view against the secular view now reigning in healthcare: that humans have extrinsic value. To treat humans as creatures with extrinsic value—meaning they have value only for what they can do, not for what they are—is to treat humans as things that produce value as opposed to persons who are valuable in and of themselves.”

Gentlemen Losers

Gentlemen Losers

“Yet I suspect that one reason Steely Dan’s star has risen in our own day is that they cannot be exclusively claimed by cultural progressives. Whatever the personal convictions of Fagen and Becker might have been, their songs capture a certain temperamental conservatism, equal parts cynicism towards the promise of a brighter tomorrow and yearning for a sense of social order long past, that feels right at home in our age of fractured shabbiness. Combine this sensibility with the band’s relentless pursuit of aesthetic perfection, and you have a recipe for music that greatly appeals to a certain segment of young fogeys more indebted to T.S. Eliot than to Charlie Kirk.”

Thinking Ourselves into Oblivion

Thinking Ourselves into Oblivion

“Without formal and final causes… we have no access to the universal intelligible structures and purposes in the world. And without those, there is no possibility of meaningful philosophy.”

Genesis Through a Glass Darkly

Genesis Through a Glass Darkly

“Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis is not a commentary or a work of scholarship but a series of essays on the human encounter with the divine as portrayed in this first and perhaps most influential of all books.”

The Book Gallery

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

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