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.
Hope—Is It Warranted at This Point?
“The past generation of American life, on Hunter’s account, has been one of intensifying ‘exhaustion’ and distrust, as the sources of pluralism have multiplied, and the endlessly ‘worked-through’ soil of the hybrid-Enlightenment has come to seem dry and depleted, no longer able to provide plausible accounts of human nature and the meaning of history that a majority of Americans can sign onto.”
The Life of Joseph Epstein
“This might have been a highly political book detailing the evolution of a conventional Cold War liberal into the conservative that he is regarded as being (even if he doesn’t label himself as such in these pages). It might have been, but it isn’t. No, this memoir was written simply because Epstein sees his life as ’emblematic of the times’ and secondly because he sees himself as having acquired the literary skill necessary to ‘recount that life well.'”
Order for a Disordered Time
“When one thinks of order one might think of the phrase law and order. Kirk explains, however, that order is wider and larger than law.”
Kirk’s Constitution: From the Roots to the End of American Order?
“The tragedy is that Kirk was correct: our Constitution was grounded in a deeper tradition, embodied in the people’s habits of thought and social practice, its religion, its historical common mind, its recognition of the importance and nature of order in the soul and, from it, order in the commonwealth. It is this tradition—this people—we have more than half lost. From this loss we have lost our public order, along with the Constitution that once supported it through good, legitimate law. “
Kirk’s American Founding Documents and the Unwritten Constitution
“…[Kirk] understands that workable written constitutions must be based on an underlying and unwritten constitution found in the culture of the people.”
The Babbitt School of Conservatism
“Viereck and Kirk—the one a Pulitzer-winning poet, the other a highly regarded author of eerie fiction—understood the nexus of morality, imagination, and politics. But the businessmen, journalists, policy experts, and politicians who came to define the conservative movement just a few years after the appearance of The Conservative Mind did not.”
The Conservative Need for Conservative Philosophy
“Ryn does not take sides in the ideological wars but urges conservatives to reject ideology altogether and to engage in deeper philosophical thinking. Philosophy does the opposite of ideology. It recognizes complexity and gropes toward a deeper understanding of reality that builds on the insights of previous thinkers. There are no final answers in true philosophy… Moreover, monistic, ideological thinking is inconsistent with constitutional politics, which requires compromise and consensus.”
A Half Century of Conservative Criticism
“…the most important theme of his essays suggests that all the common answers about where conservatism went wrong avoid a more fundamental one: conservatives have been too obsessed with politics.”
Literary Virtue and Vice
“Griffis, Ooms, and Roberts offer practices of thought and attention that those eager to read deeply would do well to implement. Yet those eager to learn how Christianity ought to inform their reading and thinking would do well to consult other writers less concerned with rehearsing the language of our milieu, such as C.S. Lewis, Flannery O’Connor, T.S. Eliot, Dana Gioia.”
The Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.
Great fiction can form character and cultivate the moral imagination. @JeffOttoNelson reviews @cjscalia's latest book.
Smith’s claims are sobering, but they do raise important questions related to how to be religious and pass on the Christian faith in the modern age. - @PhilDavignon
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