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.

To Find Eyes to See

“Hren selects earnest classics that have stood the test of time—books that generations of readers have found edifying and moving. But also, in the introduction and conclusion alike, Hren returns to another key point of fiction: it doesn’t just help us see extraordinary truth, although it can. More important is that fiction gives us eyes to see the transcendence of ordinary lives, including our own.”

Rural America as It Really Is

“Harold Bell Wright, regardless of how literary tastemakers viewed him in the 1920s, is the central figure in the origin of Branson. Though denigrated by the Baldwins and H. L. Menckens of his day, Wright was one of the century’s best-selling novelists.”

The Poet Watches Birds

“Jennifer A. Hartenburg’s debut collection of poems… offers such a poetic practice of waking, attending, and caring. These are poems rich with the life of the world, flocking with birds and bees both literal and metaphorical, but also closely attentive to the quiddities of language and the motions of the soul.”

The Founders’ Founder

Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. A Critical Edition with Modern Spelling by Richard Hooker, edited by Arthur Stephen McGrade. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Three volumes. Hardcover, 1100 pages, $420. If asked “Which thinker exerted the greatest influence...

On Incomprehensibles

The literary form of Pascal’s Pensées is something of a puzzle. Is it a series of jottings, aphorisms, short essays, even conversational letters, or all of the above? Whatever it is, it is a remarkable work bordering on the inexhaustible. Not unlike Boswell’s Life of...

Religious Liberty and the Tragic Approach to Legal Theory

The Tragedy of Religious Freedom by Marc O. DeGirolami. Harvard University Press, 2013. Hardcover, 320 pages, $45. This is a brilliant and profoundly conservative book. Its argument, though not simple, is clearly stated for the attentive reader. One likely...

Spring Permanent Things

The Spring 2014 number of our Permanent Things newsletter is up, featuring updates on recent events commemorating Russell Kirk and the strong reception in Brazil of the publication of The Politics of Prudence. You can download a copy of the PDF from this link.

Natural Law and the Challenge of Liberal Secularism

Conscience and Its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism by Robert P. George. Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2013. Hardcover, 384 pages, $30.“Man is known to exist in no part of the world, without certain rules for the regulation of his intercourse...

Strong Essays on Burke

Edmund Burke, the Enlightenment and the Modern World, edited by Peter J. Stanlis. Detroit: University of Detroit Press, 1967. 129 pp. Putting a title on a collection of disparate papers is always a problem. Considering the difficulty, the editor of this volume has...

Rise of the Poster Children

An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America by Joseph Bottum. Image, 2014. Hardcover, 296 pp. $25.What is the most consequential political change to have occurred in the United States in the past 150 years? Most observers might nominate various...

A new issue of Studies in Burke and His Time

A new issue of Studies in Burke and His Time

The Edmund Burke Society of America announces a new issue of their journal, Studies in Burke and His Time, Volume 23. The issue features articles on the theme of Burke and history. Articles from Joseph Pappin III, Jeffrey O. Nelson, Elizabeth Lambert, and Aaron D....

The Monuments of Noble Men

An Editorial There is a famous story told of the great statesman (and farmer) Marcus Cato. Despite his own fearsome reputation in war and politics, Cato professed to scorn the honor of a physical monument to his achievements. “When any seemed to wonder,” writes...

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.

To Find Eyes to See
@NadyaWilliams81 on "More Than a Matter of Taste: The Moral Imagination and the Spirit of Literature" by Joshua Hren. @WordOnFire Luminor

Rural America as It Really Is
Jason C. Phillips on "Faith, Family, and Flag: Branson Entertainment and the Idea of America" by Joanna Dee Das. @UChicagoPress

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