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 Misremembered President
Coolidge by Amity Shlaes. HarperCollins, 2013. Hardback, 565 pages, $35. Coolidge. The title is as spare and direct as the subject. Building on her previous book, The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes might have added “The Forgotten President.” Then again, perhaps she...
Literature and the Call of Faith
An interview with Gregory WolfeGregory Wolfe is publisher of Image journal, author of books including Beauty Will Change the World, and now publisher of Slant Books. He spoke recently with the Bookman on the occasion of the release of the first book fromSlant. Greg,...
On Avoiding ‘Prosperous Wickedness’
On Essays and LettersOn my desk, I have a copy of the 2003 Penguin edition of Samuel Johnson, Selected Essays. When I turn on my computer to warm up, I have about two minutes of reading, which I do at random from Johnson. It is amazing what you find in Johnson. He was...
Out of the Nursery to College, Back to the Nursery
Anti-Intellectualism and Authentic Learning in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451In a letter dated January 22, 1951 to Richard Matheson from Ray Bradbury discussing “The Fireman,” the short story that would develop into Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury explains, in part, his...
Running About with Lit Matches
“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed,” Ray Bradbury writes in Fahrenheit 451. “As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over.” Regarding the friendship between Ray Bradbury and Russell Kirk—two writers...
The Pulpy Roots of ‘Fahrenheit 451’
Thomas Bertonneau contributes to a symposium on Fahrenheit 451 and looks at themes and publishing history in Bradbury’s short stories that led up to the great dystopia.
The Marilyn Monroe of Modern Literature
An interview with Carl Rollyson.The University Bookman recently sat down with Carl Rollyson, past contributor to our special issue on biography and author of a new biography on the poet Sylvia Plath and of Amy Lowell: A New Biography, forthcoming in September 2013....
Eliot’s Politics in Context
Dreams of a Totalitarian Utopia: Literary Modernism and Politics, by Leon Surette. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011. Cloth, xv + 363 pages. $59.95.Some years ago at a conference a speaker mentioned in passing that Eliot had “flirted with fascism.” This comment...
Tolerance that Swallows Itself
The Intolerance of Tolerance by D. A. Carson. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012. Cloth, 196 pages, $24.D. A. Carson, a well-known Reformed theologian and exegete, has written a clear and well-reasoned analysis of today’s imperialistic tolerance from an...
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.
