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.”

After Ideology but Before the Revolution: The Liberal Soul

“Walsh could give voice to a devastating criticism of the critics of liberal democracy because they forgot the most important aspect of what they chopped to pieces: there can be no analysis of liberal democracy outside the convictions that underpin it, namely mutual respect for the dignity and rights of others. There is no higher purpose possible than the affirmation of the infinite worth of each human being, of each ‘person,’ and the political consequences of that affirmation: to build that insight into the regimes of self-government.”

Liberalism’s Death Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

“In this profound work, Walsh engages the friends and foes of liberalism alike to reveal its enduring appeal and resilience. Throughout he urges us to consider liberalism not so much as a stale academic doctrine, but as a lived experience rooted in the core belief of the inviolable dignity of each person as a free and rational being.”

The Paradox of Liberal Resilience

“The defense of inner liberty seems always to come as the long-awaited response and corrective to the modern state’s interventions…”

Today’s Totalitarians

Against Inclusiveness: How the Diversity Regime is Flattening America and the West and What to Do About It by James Kalb. Angelico Press, 2013. Paperback, 203 pages, $20.In his latest book, James Kalb has produced, among many other things, a phenomenology of the...

America’s Aviation Icons

The Aviators: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh, and the Epic Age of Flight by Winston Groom. National Geographic Press, 2013. Hardcover, 464 pages, $30.The young person at Barnes & Noble who led me to the stack of The Aviators, drew a blank...

Paul Elmer More and the Relevance of Life and Letters

Paul Elmer More, once described as the most “patrician” of American critics, together with Harvard professor Irving Babbitt, founded the short-lived Humanist school of criticism. The name they took for themselves alluded to the spirit of the ancient litterae...

‘I Think I Have Made Poetry’

The Letters of Robert Frost, Volume I: 1886–1920 Edited by Donald Sheehy, Mark Richardson, and Robert Faggen. Harvard University Press, 2014. Hardcover, 811 pages, $45. In a conversation with the late literary scholar Peter J. Stanlis about ten years ago, Stanlis...

Turner’s Frontier Thesis, Continued

The Lost Region: Toward a Revival of Midwestern History by Jon K. Lauck. University of Iowa Press, 2013. Paperback, 166 pages, $35.Let me say at the outset that for me the only definitive “Trails Conference” is the one that occurs toward the end of Zane Grey’s The...

Bully in the Bully Pulpit

The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Simon & Schuster, 2013. Hardcover,928 pages, $40.Has this country had a providential history? Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin must be tempted to think...

Books in Little

A Second Look at First Things: A Case for Conservative Politics. Edited by Francis J. Beckwith, Robert P. George, and Susan McWilliams. St. Augustine’s Press, 2013. Paperback, 400 pages. Hadley P. Arkes must indeed feel vindicated by this work. An intelligent...

The Real Source of Modern Judicial Review

The Real Source of Modern Judicial Review

Dred Scott v. SandfordModern judicial review has a curious history. Its proponents seek to find its origins in the 1803 case of Marbury vs. Madison. The argument is that Chief Justice John Marshall “cleverly” created judicial review as an American institution. As the...

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.

"Delsol’s analysis stands out for the breadth of its perspective. Her essay covers topics as varied as corporatism, the French love for status and strikes, immigration, religion and secularism, populism and the role of intellectuals, Jacobinism, and the EU..."

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

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