The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

What the American Revolution Secured: Order, Justice, and Freedom

Throughout the semiquincentennial year celebrating America’s independence, The University Bookman will invite a range of writers and speakers to contribute to a series drawing upon Russell Kirk’s work on the American Revolution and the constitutional order it secured.

Poetry of Transcendence

“A related, and most welcome, theme in Killing Orpheus is memento mori, a reminder of the inevitability of death. Our lives have become so long, easy, and comfortable that death has become something of an inconvenient truth, which many prefer to ignore or forget. McClatchey is not one of them, thankfully: the collection abounds with reminders of our mortality.”

The Consensus Reality

“In his study of an underlying consensus regarding education, race, and gender, Jonathan Butcher has performed a valuable service for those who wish to understand the true nature of the so-called division within American society today.”

Britain at the Turning Point

“A major theme that runs through Allport’s study is the shifting equilibrium of power relations between the United States and Britain. The war demonstrated that, as British power and resources dwindled, Britain became dependent on material and financial supplies from the United States.”

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.

Shop through Regnery
Support the Kirk Center
& University Bookman