The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

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.”

Geopolitics and the Making of the Modern World

“Brands’s book should find a ready audience among those interested in developments in the international scene over the last century. It is particularly effective in dealing with the threat that China’s emerging power and influence pose to the West today…”

The Context for Human Dignity

“While the twentieth century was still sporadically marked by remnants of Christian influence and dominance, the twenty-first has seen the final divorce of the secular and sacred, and the consequences are evident. What Leo XIII warned of, the evils he battled, have been let loose, paradigmatically captured by Artificial Intelligence which poorly imitates and devalues that which makes us essentially human… We would do well then to read Hittinger’s book in reflecting on how to face these challenges.”

Between Greatness and Hubris

“At the core of [the book] is the notion that while America is an exceptional nation, we are not immune from the perils that beset past countries and empires.”

Repeating Calamities

by JP O’Malley | Mar 16, 2014

JP O’Malley interviews Simon Schama about his new book and documentary, The Story of the Jews and recurring attacks on Jewish people and culture. He and Schama also talk about progress in history.

The Stories We Tell—The People We Become (Part 2)

by Staff | Mar 12, 2014

Read Part One here. While both the Liberal Story and the Radical Story focus on equality as a good (however differently defined), the Conservative Story is about the danger of equality. Also unlike the two stories we’ve explored, which focus on abstract universals,...

The Stories We Tell—The People We Become

by Staff | Mar 9, 2014

And it came to pass, when all the people had completely crossed over the Jordan, that the Lord spoke to Joshua, saying: “Take for yourselves twelve men from the people, one man from every tribe, and command them, saying, ‘Take for yourselves twelve stones from here,...

Small Towns Can Be Big Stages

by Will Hoyt | Mar 2, 2014

Small-Town America: Finding Community, Shaping the Future by Robert Wuthnow. Princeton University Press, 2013. Hardcover, 498 pages, $35. Small towns, as Robert Wuthnow points out in his ambitious new book, are not municipal subdivisions of large metropolitan areas....

Can America Find Order?

by Staff | Mar 2, 2014

An Unsettled People: Social Order and Disorder in American History, by Rowland Berthoff. New York: Harper and Row, 1971.A principal difficulty in writing significant social history is the necessity to harmonize certain diverse elements: the descriptive, or exposition...

Unveiling the Obvious

by Staff | Feb 23, 2014

The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss by David Bentley Hart. Yale University Press, 2013. Hardcover, 376 pages, $25.To listen to many contemporary atheists, it would seem that the question of whether or not God exists is meaningless. It is not so much...

‘Love Divine’: Remembering Gerhart Niemeyer

by Staff | Feb 23, 2014

In his book Between Nothingness and Paradise, Gerhart Niemeyer wrote: [T]he great confrontation with political irrationality in our time has not the character of a debate or even discussion. The prerequisite for either would be a common universe of reason which is...

Hoover’s Crusade Against Collectivism

by George H. Nash | Feb 16, 2014

George H. Nash, historian and biographer of Herbert Hoover, speaks with the Bookman about his new book, a previously unknown memoir from the former president. He discusses what The Crusade Years adds to our knowledge about Hoover and the post-war years, and suggests lessons we can draw from his long post-presidential career.

An Extraordinary Book

by Staff | Feb 16, 2014

Regionalism and Nationalism in the United States: The Attack on Leviathan, by Donald Davidson, with a new introduction by Russell Kirk. Transaction Publishers, [1938] 1991. xxiii + 368 pp., $33.In the year 1990, half the peoples of the world have risen to strike a...