The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Watch James Panero of the New Criterion discuss “The Urbanity of Russell Kirk” at the 2025 Gerald Russello Memorial Lecture.

The Urbanity of Russell Kirk

“The urban fabric must also be mended and darned through continuous upkeep. The city is not yours to experiment. From Russell to Russello, our ancestral spirits cast their shadows whether or not we choose to observe the city of god in the cities of men.”

Marxism and the Rising Generation

“Gonzalez and Gorka have performed an important service in bringing together a wide range of fact and theory and in establishing a coherent line stretching directly from Marx through many important figures to the present day.”

Cracking the Code to Civilization

“In a world flooded with online influencers, ‘red pill’ rhetoric, and algorithmic posturing, Newell offers something older, wiser, and far superior: a code of manliness rooted in the Western tradition of virtue, character, and service. His message is that true manliness is not a pose or performance; it is the integration of moral and intellectual excellence, what he calls ‘the manly heart.’”

France and the Problem of Abstraction

“…French people’s love for ideas, indeed for ideology, often puts them at odds with the pragmatic requisites of a mature democracy and with reality itself. France is, as she very aptly puts it, ‘a country of dreamers who fall into melancholy when reality catches up with them.’ But far from being merely a psychological explanation for French unhappiness, this idealism is the key to a political understanding of our complicated relationship with the very principle of democracy.”

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...

Coke and the Western Legal Tradition

Common Law. El pensamiento político y jurídico de Sir Edward Coke (Common Law. The political and juridical thought of Sir Edward Coke) by Elio A. Gallego García. Madrid: Ediciones Encuentro, 2012. Paperback, 204 pages, $24.Has the past still something to tell us? Is...

Thinking Like Edmund Burke?

The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke: From the Sublime and Beautiful to American Independence. By David Bromwich. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014. Hardcover, 512 pages, $40. This first installment of a two-volume intellectual biography of Burke is...

A Marvelous Tale

Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary by J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien. Houghton Mifflin, 2014. Hardcover, 448 pages, $28. J. R. R. Tolkien’s newly published translation of Beowulf will be of interest to two overlapping groups: on the one hand,...

Progressives and the Booboisie

The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class by Fred Siegel. Encounter Books, 2014. Hardcover, 240 pages, $24.What do H. L. Mencken and Barack Obama have in common? Not much, it would seem. The sage of Baltimore was skeptical of all...

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.

Cracking the Code to Civilization
@CliffordBates12 on "The Code of Man: Love, Courage, Pride, Family, Country" (2nd Edition) by @waller_newell

Marxism and the Rising Generation
Jeffrey Folks on "NextGen Marxism: What It Is and How to Combat It" by @Gundisalvus and Katharine Cornell Gorka @EncounterBooks

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