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.
The “Christian Nationalism” Canard
“If the city and the soul are connected, as Russell Kirk affirmed, then what shapes the soul shapes the city, and vice versa, which means that vacating the public square entails transforming society…”
A Social Scientific Apologia for Marriage
“…Wilcox is here to do something unusual… He intuits a need for an updated social scientific apologia of marriage—something that champions marriage comprehensively from a social scientific perspective…”
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.”
Celebrate “Kirktober” by Supporting The University Bookman
Help us reach our $20k goal this “Kirktober”
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 Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.
October is the perfect time to get involved and support @ubookman. We're seeking to raise $20k this month to help support our stable of writers reviewing the books that shape culture. Learn more and get involved here: https://buff.ly/hOr9DE2.
Me on The Postwar British Conservative Movement for @ubookman
Shop through Regnery
Support the Kirk Center
& University Bookman
