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.
The Needs of Modernity’s Orphans
Symposium: The Conservative Mind at 60At the time Russell Kirk wrote The Conservative Mind there was already considerable confusion as to just what conservatism meant. America’s political parties and movements, dating back to the Revolution, always adopted the names...
An Excursion into the Broader World
Symposium: The Conservative Mind at 60 It is easy to sum up the historical significance of The Conservative Mind. With eloquence and conviction Russell Kirk demonstrated that reflective conservatism is neither a smokescreen for selfishness nor the ritual incantation...
The Deeper Roots of Social Order
Symposium: The Conservative Mind at 60Sixty years after its publication, The Conservative Mind could easily be dismissed as an irrelevant artifact of a failed political movement. The “conservative movement” has utterly failed to stop or even slow the leftward tilt of...
A Problem of Definition
Symposium: The Conservative Mind at 60Russell Kirk’s careful delineations in the earliest pages of The Conservative Mind make clear his awareness of a fundamental problem when we consider conservatism. It is a slippery phenomenon. Edmund Burke was a conservative, but...
The Use and Abuse of Samuel Johnson
The Interpretation of Samuel Johnson. Jonathan Clark & Howard Erskine-Hill, editors. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Hardcover, 264 pages, $85. The Politics of Samuel Johnson. Jonathan Clark & Howard Erskine-Hill, editors. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Hardcover, 256...
From Practice to Theory
It Didn’t Have to Be This Way: Why Boom and Bust Is Unnecessary—and How the Austrian School of Economics Breaks the Cycle by Harry C. Veryser. ISI Books, 2013. Hardcover, 318 pages, $29. It is rare for an American manufacturing executive operating in the domestic...
Still Left in the Dark
Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark by Brian Kellow. Viking Adult, 2011. Hardcover, 417 pages, $28.After Richard Nixon was re-elected President in 1972, Newsweek magazine quoted acclaimed film critic Pauline Kael as saying: “I live in a rather special world. I only know...
What We’re Reading (Summer 2013)
Last year’s summer reading list was justifiably popular, so the Bookman pleased to return with another round of contributions from our reviewers, who have culled through the massive numbers of books published to focus on those worth reading, discussing, and digesting....
Pragmatists versus Agrarians?
Superfluous Southerners: Cultural Conservatism and the South, 1920–1990 by John J. Langdale. University of Missouri Press, 2012. Cloth, 192 pages, $50. (Kindle ed.) John J. Langdale’s Superfluous Southerners paints a magnificent portrait of Southern conservatism and...
The Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.
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