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.

To Find Eyes to See

“Hren selects earnest classics that have stood the test of time—books that generations of readers have found edifying and moving. But also, in the introduction and conclusion alike, Hren returns to another key point of fiction: it doesn’t just help us see extraordinary truth, although it can. More important is that fiction gives us eyes to see the transcendence of ordinary lives, including our own.”

Rural America as It Really Is

“Harold Bell Wright, regardless of how literary tastemakers viewed him in the 1920s, is the central figure in the origin of Branson. Though denigrated by the Baldwins and H. L. Menckens of his day, Wright was one of the century’s best-selling novelists.”

The Poet Watches Birds

“Jennifer A. Hartenburg’s debut collection of poems… offers such a poetic practice of waking, attending, and caring. These are poems rich with the life of the world, flocking with birds and bees both literal and metaphorical, but also closely attentive to the quiddities of language and the motions of the soul.”

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....

Renewing Our Understanding of True Freedom

Renewing Our Understanding of True Freedom

Called to Freedom: Retrieving Christian Liberty in an Age of License By Brad Littlejohn. B&H Academic, 2025. Paperback, 192 pages, $22.99. Reviewed by Andrew Fowler. reedom could be Modernity’s most overused yet least understood word. In an...

Abolitionism’s George Washington

Abolitionism’s George Washington

The Conductor: The Story of Rev. John Rankin, Abolitionism’s Essential Founding Father By Caleb Franz. Post Hill Press, 2024. Paperback, 336 pages, $18.99. Reviewed by Peter Biles. he past is like a waterfall, and history is like the glass of water...

Life During Wartime

Life During Wartime

To Go On Living: Stories By Narine Abgaryan. Plough, 2025. Hardcover, 220 pages, $24.95. Reviewed by Michial Farmer. odern Westerners live with a delusion. We actually live with a lot of delusions, but perhaps the most insidious one is that the...

The Triumph of Love

The Triumph of Love

Muses of a Fire: Essays on Faith, Film, and Literature By Paul Krause. Stone Tower Press, 2024. Paperback, 227 pages, $24.95. Reviewed by Jesse Russell. oman Polanski’s 1974 masterpiece Chinatown is not only a classic of film noir, but it is also...

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.

Register for our next book gallery on June 22, 2026:
Russell Kirk On America: How to Understand the Legacy of 1776

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