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.”

Unamuno: No Evangelist, No Secularist

Unamuno: No Evangelist, No Secularist

The Agony of Christianity by Miguel de Unamuno. Translated by Anthony Kerrigan; annotated by Anthony Kerrigan and Martin Nozick. Vol. 5 in the Bollingen works of Unamuno. Princeton University Press, 1974. $11.00.If, a hundred or a thousand years from now, there are...

A Fair-Minded Polemic

LeoStrauss and the Conservative Movement in America: A Critical Appraisal by Paul Edward Gottfried. Cambridge, 2013. Paperback, 194 pages, $27. Every year brings a new crop of books about Leo Strauss. The New York Times last year reviewed two, Laurence Lampert’s The...

Liberal Impartiality

The Burke-Paine Controversy: Texts and Criticism, edited by Ray B. Browne. Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1963. 230 pp. The famous controversy between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine was really not a controversy at all. Burke published his Reflections on the...

Call for Proposals

Our friend and Bookman contributor Lee Trepanier writes to us about a new series he is launching for Lexington Books: Lexington Books is pleased to announce the launch of the following new book series: Politics, Literature, and Film. We are actively seeking proposals...

It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s J. Alfred Prufrock!

It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s J. Alfred Prufrock!

A conversation with Julian PetersJulian Peters is in the process of creating a comic book adaptation of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” He graciously agreed to an interview with poetry critic and comic book aficionado, Micah Mattix, to discuss the...

A Dark Prospect

The Future of Literature, by Arther S. Trace Jr. New York: Phaedra Publishers, Inc., 1972.Arther Trace has written an aggressive little book. He is provoked with his peers in the literary community, and he has advanced a number of explanations for his wrath. In both...

The Conservative Mind at Sixty—in St Andrews

The Conservative Mind at Sixty—in St Andrews

Annette Kirk and several friends and Wilbur Fellows traveled in October to Saint Andrews, Scotland, as part of the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of publication of The Conservative Mind. Alvino-Mario Fantini has written an article for The American Conservative...

A Dark Path to Recovery

The Loss and Recovery of Truth: Selected Writings by Gerhart Niemeyer. Edited by Michael Henry. St. Augustine’s Press, 2013. Hardcover, 648 pages, $60. Gerhart Niemeyer (1907–1997) brought to the study of political science a philosophical sensitivity born of his...

These Marks of Remembrance

These Marks of Remembrance

Collected Letters of John Randolph of Roanoke to Dr. John Brockenbrough, 1812–1833. Edited by Kenneth Shorey, with a foreword by Russell Kirk. Transaction Books, 1988. Hardcover, 192 pages [e-text]. John Randolph of Roanoke was—even for his warmest admirers—a most...

The Book Gallery

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

@ubookman The mission of @ubookman is to identify and discuss those books that diagnose the modern age through the prism of the Permanent Things and so to support cultural renewal. Thanks for joining Bookman writers and readers to do our part to redeem the time. https://buff.ly/6uf2yRz

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