The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Frontier Fiction at Its Best

“This classic frontier story—of the fostered orphan who escapes the baddies who killed his family and who returns to wreak vengeance upon them—is enriched by a vivid depiction of Comanche culture and traditional way of life and by narrative motifs whose roots are deep in the soil of myth and fable…”

The Postmodern Poetry of J.R.R. Tolkien

“Even if Tolkien did not understand his literary enterprise as distinctively modernist, many of the techniques he deployed—the creation of a secondary world, for instance, or his invented languages, and above all the metatextual integration of poetry and prose—nonetheless bear a resemblance to the experiments in letters conducted by his more avant-garde peers.”

Catholic Zen

“Walsh’s philosophy is timely. For the Christian, it’s imperative to try to understand the mystery of the Trinity and always will be, so theology of the person is destined to be a never-completed project. For everybody else, the question of the person has invaded our daily lives. Invaded is the wrong word, of course. The person is always there, but occasionally we glimpse deeply the persons that are woven into our lives. Disputations on abortion and euthanasia reduce to warring conceptions of the person, and now artificial intelligence challenges commonplace understandings of persons and relationships.”

Outlining Sanity in the Garden

“…there are those books like The Tao of Vegetable Gardening by Carol Deppe, which is a beautiful hybrid: mostly how-to gardening advice, but laced with a meditational attitude that, though rarely overt, informs the book as a whole… [It] is part of a rich bed of American gardening literature that, in the words of M.E. Bradford, mixes ‘practical agricultural advice and moral reflection.’”

The U.S. Constitution and Slavery 

The U.S. Constitution and Slavery 

“…these works by Gilhooley and Watkins might be better framed not simply as critiques of the Philadelphia Constitution or of the original intent of its framers, but as critiques of the American experiment with popular constitutionalism itself.”

Draining the Swamp

Draining the Swamp

“What can be easily detected in these pages is Bernhardt’s skepticism, doubts, and concerns about the role of experts and expertise within the administrative state.”

After Liberalism…Faith?

After Liberalism…Faith?

“[Gray’s] newest book highlights the nature of the work right in the sub-title: ‘Thoughts after Liberalism.’ This is not an argument that liberalism has failed… or a program for what should come after liberalism… or a philosophical critique of liberalism… Instead, it is as though the reader has been invited to eavesdrop on Gray’s inner dialogues as he mulls over a post-liberal world.”

A Wild Ride Characterized by Potholes

A Wild Ride Characterized by Potholes

“Jesus in the Minnows places a firm coda on the Catholic beat phenomenon: firmly ensconcing what was good within it, while also reflectively revealing the unattractiveness of the hedonism from which the Lord led its members.”

For They Shall Be Comforted

For They Shall Be Comforted

“…St. Jerome[‘s]… heartfelt prose provides warm words of consolation and confident hope to friends mourning the loss of loved ones. Now, for the first time… seven of [his] celebrated letters have been translated into English…”

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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