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.”

Happier Cities, Happier Lives?

Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design by Charles Montgomery. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013. Hardcover, 290 pages, $27.This is a fascinating and informative but at the same time maddening book. It contains a wealth of evidence making the case that...

On Having Faces

Recently, I received a letter, post-marked Lima, from a young Peruvian student who had attended Georgetown. She tells me that she has just finished reading C. S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces, a book that I recommend to anyone who will listen. She writes: One of my...

Gottfried Responds

Paul Gottfried responds to Daniel McCarthy’s review of his book on Leo Strauss.Dan McCarthy is to be commended for his fair-minded review of my study of Leo Strauss and Strauss’s influence on the American conservative movement. I hope that Dan’s efforts will have the...

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...

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