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.”

Edmund Burke: Christian Statesman

First, Edmund Burke was a Christian, despite the doubts that critics have expressed about his faith. But he was the child of a mixed marriage between a Catholic mother and a Protestant father, a member of the Established Church of Ireland. Because Edmund was somewhat...

Mackinder, Geography, and History

Halford Mackinder (1861–1947) understood the forces that shape world politics better than any thinker of the twentieth century. When he delivered his famous address to the Royal Geographical Society in London in January 1904—an address that accurately foresaw the main...

Defining the Just Society

A Theory of Justice, by John Rawls. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1972.What is justice? This question has perennially aroused the avid interest of man ever since he began pondering the riddles of the universe. Plato, who...

Reclaiming the Common Mind

The Common Mind: Politics, Society, and Christian Humanism, by André Gushurst-Moore. Tacoma, WA: Angelico Press, 2013. 251 pages. $25. T. S. Eliot gives a statement by the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus as an epigraph to Four Quartets: “Although the Logos is...

Repeating Calamities

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)

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

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

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?

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...

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

Load More

Shop through Regnery
Support the Kirk Center
& University Bookman