The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Revivifying the Conservative Movement

“Roberts has perceived the deep and fundamental crisis within the American body politic, and that crisis is a spiritual crisis.”

The Centrality of Civic Virtue

“A just polity grows as we acquire a moral sense, which fosters attitudes and actions of benevolence toward others…”

Revivifying the Conservative Movement

“Roberts has perceived the deep and fundamental crisis within the American body politic, and that crisis is a spiritual crisis.”

Virtuous Living, Not Just for Philosophers

“Abela refers to both the cardinal virtues and their many subsidiary virtues as ‘super habits’ in order to tap into the popularity of recent books about the importance of habit formation.”

Right Populism

by Benjamin Clark | Nov 26, 2023

“[Kendall] thus seems likely to remain a challenging figure within the conservative intellectual tradition, but the challenges he offers his readers should make a study of his thought a more profitable exercise, not less.”

Squeezing Out Virtue and Beauty

by Lee Trepanier | Nov 26, 2023

“…the presence of CTLs raise a fundamental question about teaching and learning themselves: can teaching and learning be reduced to a single methodology or are they by nature resistant to it?”

Russell Kirk’s Book of Love

by Daniel McCarthy | Nov 19, 2023

“Kirk’s conservatism was the conservatism of loss—not of rout or retreat, and certainly not despair, but a conservatism that treasures what is gone as well as what we have. Our civilization of love, the age of chivalry, is dead. Yet the dead are with us still.”

Conservatives’ Cornerstone

by Kevin Roberts | Nov 19, 2023

“A populist, anti-ideological Kirkian conservatism of the heart remains Americans’ best hope for national renewal, and the Right’s only real path back to national leadership.”

Russell Kirk and The Conservative Mind

by George H. Nash | Nov 12, 2023

“With eloquence and conviction Kirk demonstrated that reflective conservatism is neither a smokescreen for selfishness nor the ritual incantation of the privileged. It is an attitude toward life with moral substance of its own.”

The Conservative Mind at 70

by Roger Kimball | Nov 12, 2023

“[Kirk’s] own brand of conservatism admitted principles but regarded ‘positions’ and ‘dogmata’… with hostility. He blended a nostalgic romanticism with a Burkean faith in the advantages of tradition and ‘sound prejudice.'”