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.

A New Introduction to the Austrian School

“After discussing Menger, the authors go on to present the ideas of subsequent major figures in the history of the Austrian school, including Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Friedrich von Wieser, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Israel Kirzner, and Murray Rothbard.”

After Mansfield

“In his most recent work… Mansfield presents a rich and nuanced portrait of the development of modern political thought.”

How Charlotte Brontë Became Charlotte Brontë

“Graham Watson’s biography of Charlotte is a judiciously researched and well-written overview of the final years of Charlotte’s life… readers will learn just how central Charlotte was to the literary establishment that both praised and scorned her.”

Look Under the Turnip

The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales by Franz Xaver Schönwerth, translated with an introduction and commentary by Maria Tatar. Penguin Classics, 2015. Paperback, 288 pages, $17.In 2012, in Regensburg, Germany, Erica Eichenseer, a cultural curator...

The Final Artistic Taboo

After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History by Arthur Danto. Princeton University Press, 1997, 2014. Paperback, 272 pages, $20.“How can someone possessed of learning and culture in the highest degree spread ideas that are entirely inimical to...

From the Trenches to the Shire

A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, & Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914–1918. by Joseph Loconte. Thomas Nelson, 2015. Hardcover, 244 pages, $25.Many words have been devoted to the literature and...

Books in Little

Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism by Albert Camus. Translated by Ronald Srigely. St. Augustine’s Press, 2015. Hardcover, 176 pages, $27. I have always viewed Christianity as a thorn in the side for Albert Camus. He was constantly fascinated by it, but also...

‘Spoken with Sufficient Seriousness’

On April 12, 1656, Pascal began his XI Provincial Letter “To the Reverend Fathers, the Jesuits,” in this manner: “Reverend Fathers, I have seen the letters which you are circulating in opposition to those which I wrote to one of my friends on your morality; and I...

Churchill Defends the Gallipoli Campaign

Winston Churchill reportedly once remarked that history would treat him kindly because he intended to write it. Churchill’s efforts to do so failed with respect to the Gallipoli Campaign—the allied attempt during the First World War to force the Dardanelles Strait,...

Ethnicity Matters

Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Oxford University Press, 1993. Hardcover, 221 pages, $110. In 1947, Solomon Bloom, a student of Marxism and nationalism, published an article in Commentary entitled “The Peoples of my Home...

Norman Lear, Conservative?

Even This I Get to Experience by Norman Lear. Penguin Press, 2014. Hardcover, 448 pages, $33.British comic novelist and television writer Douglas Adams was once asked to explain the difference between a comic writer and a wit. “A wit will think of a funny response at...

The Whig Theory of Christianity

Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism by Larry Siedentop. Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2014. Hardcover, 448 pages, $35. In its basic assumptions, liberal thought is the offspring of Christianity. It emerged as the moral institutions...

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.

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