The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Join friends of the Bookman in New York City on December 8, 2025 for the Gerald Russello Memorial Lecture.

William F. Buckley Jr.: Literary Figure 

“…the American public intellectual might best be appreciated as a literary figure. Producing about 350,000 words for publication yearly at the peak of his career, Buckley was never at a loss for what to say or how to say it.”

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.”

Revisiting Walter Lippmann

“Lippmann sought to be—and was—what might be described today as an influencer. As such, he never sought to wield power, but he long desired to have the ears and eyes of the powerful. Arnold-Forster is certainly not unaware of that. But it is never his central message. If there is such a message in these pages, and there is, it is his effort to make the reader aware that Walter Lippmann, believer in and defender of the efficacy of progressive government, was also Walter Lippmann, believer in and defender of both the reality and importance of empire in general and of the American empire in particular.”

Family Homes and Drive-in Churches

“After the optimism of the suburban boom, it all went bust. Mass attendance fell by 70 percent. Women’s religious life died out. Parochial education was crippled… The green grass of suburbia was starved into a desiccated, brown waste.”

William F. Buckley Jr.: Literary Figure 

“…the American public intellectual might best be appreciated as a literary figure. Producing about 350,000 words for publication yearly at the peak of his career, Buckley was never at a loss for what to say or how to say it.”

Playing for Virtual Transcendence

Virtually Sacred: Myth and Meaning in World of Warcraft and Second Life, by Robert M. Geraci. Oxford University Press, 2014. Hardcover, 368 pages, $35. Reviewed by Kevin Schut In Virtually Sacred, religious studies scholar Robert M. Geraci tackles the topic of...

Playfulness and Profundity

Virtually Sacred: Myth and Meaning in World of Warcraft and Second Life, by Robert M. Geraci. Oxford University Press, 2014. Hardcover, 368 pages, $35.Reviewed by Daniel J. HolmesIt requires a certain sense of academic playfulness to take a theological approach to...

Navigating a Secular Age

How (Not) to Be Secular by James K. A. Smith. Eerdmans, 2014. Paper, 152 pages, $16.In early August I went backpacking in the Glacier Peak Wilderness of the North Cascades. The terrain was unfamiliar to me, and I knew very little of what to expect other than what I...

No More Idols: Taking Measure of a Modern Prophet

No More Idols: Taking Measure of a Modern Prophet

Solzhenitsyn and the Modern World by Edward E. Ericson, Jr. Regnery Gateway 1993. Cloth, xi + 432 pp., $24. As breathing returns after our swoon, as a glimmer of consciousness breaks through the unrelieved darkness, it is difficult for us at first to regain our...

Words and Deeds

Maya Angelou (1928–2014)There is a scene near the end of Old Goriot in which the young Rastignac, still new to Paris and Parisian society, observes that “[n]oble natures cannot dwell in this world.” In Balzac’s eponymous novel, Goriot, having literally given...

An Integrated Vision

Aethereal Rumours: T. S. Eliot’s Physics and Poetics, by Benjamin G. Lockerd, Jr. Bucknell University Press, 1999. 320pp., $48.50 cloth. The title of this book, intriguing though it is, may seem forbidding and suggestive of recondite subject matter. Certainly, it is a...

The 2015 Burke Conference

The Edmund Burke Society of America invites you to its third conference, “Edmund Burke and Patriotism” to be held at Villanova University on February 27–28, 2015. The conference aims to trace the development in the relationship between patriotism, liberty, and duty...

Third Burke Conference Announced!

The Edmund Burke Society of America is pleased to announce a call for papers and open registration for “Edmund Burke and Patriotism,” their third conference on Edmund Burke. It will be held on February 27 and 28, 2015 at Villanova University. Keynote addresses will be...

The Rock Star of One First Street

Scalia: A Court of One by Bruce Allen Murphy. Simon & Schuster, 2014. Cloth, 656 pp., $35.This is an unusual book. One has the feeling that the author does not really care for his subject, but, in spite of himself, Bruce Allen Murphy, the Fred Morgan Kirby...

The Book Gallery

A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.

How to Love What is Permanent
Sarah Reardon on "Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity" by Joshua Gibbs.
@CirceInstitute

Personalism in the Age of AI Grant R. Martsolf on "Personalism for the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honor of David Walsh" Edited by Thomas W. Holman and Richard Avramenko.
@RLPublisher

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