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.

Gordon Wood and the Verisimilitudes of Consensus History

“…Wood’s bold and consistent emphasis was on the revolutionary nature not just of the American Revolution but of America itself… The only sense of nationhood and national purpose, in Wood’s rendering, came from the Revolution…”

Forming the American Imagination

“Culture-making and imagination formation—in short, the education of the affections—though movies, music, and literature have been left almost entirely to those who view the inherited Western and American tradition with suspicion, if not outright contempt.”

A Man for All Seasons

“His latest book is a collection of essays that reflect the breadth of his interests and the power of his pen. [It] contains delightful ruminations on matters as diverse as his home state of California, his teachers and heroes, domestic culture and politics, foreign affairs, and the miscellaneous diversions that have occupied his lively mind.”

Reappraising Woodrow Wilson

Reappraising Woodrow Wilson

“…it is hardly a biography at all. If anything, it is a history of the painfully gradual process of finally securing the right to vote for American women.”

Lessons from Sparta

Lessons from Sparta

“…Sparta’s Third Attic War and its predecessors are philosophical meditations on such weighty issues as the rise and fall of civilizations and the fundamental motives of major players within these civilizations.”

Defending the Christian Faith

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.”

Poet on a Volcano

Poet on a Volcano

Horace: Poet on a Volcano By Peter Stothard.  Yale University Press, 2025.  Hardcover. 288 pages. $28. Reviewed by Nadya Williams. nce upon a time, a middle-aged poet climbed up to the top of the Sicilian volcano Mount Etna. He gazed a while with...

Alasdair MacIntyre: Philosopher of the Ages

Alasdair MacIntyre: Philosopher of the Ages

Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue, 1913-1922 Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, Md.) 208 pp., $33.00 cloth, 2005 The Tasks of Philosophy: Selected Essays, Vol. 1 Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, U.K.) 244 pp., $70.00 cloth, 2006 Ethics and Politics: Selected...

Reforming Education Begins (and ends) with the Virtues

Reforming Education Begins (and ends) with the Virtues

Teaching the Virtues By David Hein. Mecosta House, 2025. Paperback, 222 pages, $16.95. Reviewed by Thomas Griffin. ristotle famously began his Metaphysics with a foundational principle: “All men by nature desire to know.” This leads to two further...

Irretrievable Eden

Irretrievable Eden

Outside The Gates of Eden By David Middleton. Measure Press, 2023. Hardcover, 114 pages, $25. Reviewed by Madeleine Austin. avid Middleton’s Outside the Gates of Eden is a collection of formal poems rooted in contemplation of the Book of Genesis....

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.

Finding Faith in Fiction
Christine Norvell on "Wondrous Reading: Encountering the Catholic Faith in Children’s Literature" by @LuElla_DAmico

A Man for All Seasons
@BradleyCSWatson (@HillsdaleInDC) on "Dispatches from the Late Republic: The Culture, Politics, and Prophets of American Greatness, Decline, and Rebirth" by Michael Anton. @EncounterBooks

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