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.

John Adams: Russell Kirk’s Founding Federalist

“…[Kirk] located the mainstream of the American Founding not with the Jeffersonian Republicans, but with their rivals in the Federalist party. Kirk admired them not only as practical statesmen, but also as anti-revolutionary thinkers in their own right. As he put it, the Constitution they supported was both ‘the most successful conservative device in the history of the world’ and a ‘great monument’ to the Federalists.”

The Patriotic Russell Kirk

“Taken together, the essays in this collection have a distinctly American air, but one spiced by the enlivening spirit of a much longer historical consciousness.”

Jesuits and Revolutions

“…these… reveal Carola’s gift as a novelist, reminding the reader that the great theological and ecclesiastical questions of the age were debated and decided by flesh-and-blood human beings with normal needs and emotions.”

The Truth About Fusionism’s Founder

The Truth About Fusionism’s Founder

“…is an impressively investigated and superbly written biography. The incredible narrative is told chronologically in thirty-six chapters enriched by an incredible warehouse discovery that ‘unleashed amazing stories’ and ‘rescued a mislaid, vibrant history’ about a formidable eccentric at the front of a dynamic twentieth-century movement. As unlikely as Meyer’s life was, it is also unlikely that another biography will top Flynn’s splendid portrayal of the cultural warrior who journeyed with supreme optimism to the side he thought could and would win.”

A Fellow of Infinite Jest

A Fellow of Infinite Jest

“…Peter K. Andersson provides a well-researched and thorough explanation of a man who only appeared to historians as a marginal figure, but who was a seemingly important member of Henry VIII and his children’s social milieu.”

Buckley at 100: The Redhunter, William F. Buckley, Jr.

Buckley at 100: The Redhunter, William F. Buckley, Jr.

“[The book] was intended not to confirm all of McCarthy’s accusations or to overlook his failings but instead to attempt to set the record straight about the truths behind many of McCarthy’s allegations and to highlight the danger of ignoring the enemy within.”

Buckley at 100: The Redhunter, William F. Buckley, Jr.

Buckley at 100: Countering the Communist Threat

“…McCarthy raised a specific issue that American conservatives in the halcyon days of the modern movement could rally around–whether the U.S. State Department and its security program were corrupted by what Buckley and Bozell deemed the ‘criminal nonchalance’ of the department in its treatment of security and loyalty risks.”

Reason Reimagined: Ross Douthat’s Case for Belief 

Reason Reimagined: Ross Douthat’s Case for Belief 

“…reality shows signs of intelligent design oriented to the good of human beings. Even more, the mind is uniquely capable of discovering that intelligent design. And miracles and supernatural experiences continue to occur in the modern world, even under the microscope of modern science.”

Unmasking the Ideological Lie

Unmasking the Ideological Lie

“…Mahoney has taken on an ambitious task: a sweeping examination of the nature, history, and consequences of the ideology that permeates almost all of modern existence…”

A Measured Look at an Unsettling Ideology

A Measured Look at an Unsettling Ideology

“Kirsch could have limited himself to serving up red meat to readers weary of the excesses of radical students and professors breathing ‘theory and invective,’ but instead, he challenged himself by seriously wrestling with a real problem identified by the settler colonialists. The creation of settler-colonial countries really did displace huge numbers of natives. What does that do to the legitimacy of these countries?”

Stylist for the Ages

Stylist for the Ages

“To estimate Chateaubriand with any justice, one should try to imagine what might have been the effect had Lord Byron not died prematurely of camp-fever at Missolonghi, but rather, having returned to and reconciled with his native country, adopted the political and religious principles of Burke, sat down in his life’s autumn to write an immortal autobiography, and anticipated the coming of the Oxford Movement with a series of energetic defenses of the twin causes of Tory Monarchism and the Established Church.”

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.

Kirk saw poetry, fiction, tradition, and restraint as essential to understanding America and preserving its character. In his review of "On America," @cjscalia explores Kirk’s vision of the founding, statesmanship, literature, and the enduring ideas that have shaped the republic.

The Audacious Russell Kirk
Bruce P. Frohnen reviews "On America: How to Understand the Legacy of 1776" by Russell Kirk. Edited by Michael Lucchese.

Sign up to receive the Bookman each Friday directly in your inbox.

* indicates required

Shop through Creed and Culture Publishing