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.”

Unveiling the Obvious

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

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

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

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...

The first Bookman e-book!

In honor of the great historian John Lukacs, who turns ninety in 2014, we are delighted to announce publication of the first e-book from the University Bookman. The Bookman on John Lukacs features essays and reviews by and about Lukacs gathered from fifty years of our...

Hollow Men and the Search for a Workable Pluralism

The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief by George M. Marsden. Basic Books, 2014. Hardcover, 264 pp. $27. Randall Jarrell once observed that “The people who live in a Golden Age usually go around complaining how yellow...

The Rebirth of a Christian State

The Byzantine Revival, 780–842, by Warren Treadgold. Stanford University Press, 1988, 504 pp., $49.50. In the year 146 B.C. Scipio Aemilianus, adopted grandson of the conqueror of Hannibal and son of the conqueror of Macedonia, watched Rome’s great enemy, Carthage,...

Pop Culture Mysticism

Conservative outlets will occasionally run a light piece about how this movie or that pop song is actually conservative, as if they had found a gold coin in a landfill of dung. In fact, religious mysticism, if not Republican dogma, radiates through the popular culture. And we are missing it.

Conservatism and Decline

The Conservative Mind, from Burke to Eliot by Russell Kirk. Fifth revised edition. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1973. In 1902, from somewhere on Regent Street, my mother watched Edward VII’s coronation parade. As she saw this gold and scarlet pageant drawn from 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.

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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