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.

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.”

How to Love What is Permanent

“Throughout the book, Gibbs pleads with his readers that we not only think of the soul in terms of salvation but also in terms of health. Good taste won’t save one’s soul. But it will nourish the soul and incline the soul towards virtue much more than the bad taste we will acquire from mediocre things.”

Personalism in the Age of AI

“Personalism is a philosophical movement that places the human person at the center of inquiry, affirming the inherent dignity, value, and uniqueness of each individual. While it spans both religious and secular traditions, its common thread is a commitment to defending the irreducible reality of the person in an age increasingly shaped by systems, technologies, and abstractions.”

Christopher Dawson and Pluralism

“In particular, I want to examine three aspects of Dawson’s thought: his conclusion that cultures, especially Western culture, historically have been pluralist; his contention that a pluralism of cultures preserves a sphere of freedom from dominant modern ideologies that would eliminate that freedom; and finally, Dawson’s conviction that a pluralist world represents a new opportunity for evangelization.”

Visions of Order

The Unwinding: an Inner History of the New America by George Packer. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2013. Hardcover, 448 pages, $27.Liberal journalist George Packer has written a conservative book. At least, I found it to be conservative, at its core. In this “inner...

McConnell Seminar and Video

McConnell Seminar and Video

Dr. Gary L. Gregg, Director of the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville, brought students from the McConnell Center to the Russell Kirk Center on Labor Day weekend to discuss Russell Kirk’s book The Conservative Mind on the 60th anniversary of its...

Can You Hear Me Now?

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. Broadway/Random House, 2013. Paper, 368 pages, $16. In Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain seeks to create a revolution, and after reading her...

Another Epitaph on American Exceptionalism

Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century by Patrick Smith. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. Hardcover, 231 pages, $27.50. This slender volume consists of four essays offering four variations on a single theme. Since “the American century is behind...

Books in Little

Theodore Dalrymple, Farewell Fear (New English Review Press, 2012, 238 pp.) In his most recent book, English essayist Theodore Dalrymple covers a wide range of cultural topics, from good-natured folks who love hedgehogs to personal ads that prompt unrealistic romantic...

Characterizing the Two Britains

Sea Changes by Derek Turner. Washington Summit Publishers, 2012. Paperback, 456 pages, $23. “And certainly the glass was beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist. In another second Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly down into the...

Reading C. S. Lewis from the Inside Out

C. S. Lewis—A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet by Alister McGrath. Tyndale, 2013. Hardcover, 488 pages, $24. Fifty years after his death, the Irish born but British bred scholar, apologist, and novelist C. S. Lewis remains incredibly popular in America, where...

Deinstitutionalizing the Humanities?

So the American Academy of Arts and Sciences issued a report defending the humanities. It wasn’t a very resolute defense, and it seemed somewhat desperate. The result was all kinds of articles that were more about recording than resisting the humanities’ decline and...

The Book Gallery

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

How to Love What is Permanent
Sarah Reardon on "Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity" by Joshua Gibbs.
@CirceInstitute

Personalism in the Age of AI Grant R. Martsolf on "Personalism for the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honor of David Walsh" Edited by Thomas W. Holman and Richard Avramenko.
@RLPublisher

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