The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Join friends of the Bookman in New York City on December 8 for the Gerald 2025 Russello Memorial Lecture.

Defending the Christian Faith

“In 100 Tough Questions For Catholics: Common Obstacles To Faith Today… David G. Bonagura, Jr. gives bite-sized answers to dozens of big questions about the faith.”

Christopher Dawson and Pluralism

“In particular, I want to examine three aspects of Dawson’s thought: his conclusion that cultures, especially Western culture, historically have been pluralist; his contention that a pluralism of cultures preserves a sphere of freedom from dominant modern ideologies that would eliminate that freedom; and finally, Dawson’s conviction that a pluralist world represents a new opportunity for evangelization.”

Trust and Hope as the Final Words

“Each poem is biblically rooted, but Kohler draws on extra-biblical sources and her own creative imagination to ponder what her characters may have been thinking during the pivotal moments of their mostly undocumented lives. The result is a beautiful exploration into the hearts and minds of the women of the Bible—both named and unnamed—that leaves readers feeling as though the women are imminently present, sharing their innermost thoughts and the overlooked aspects of their experiences.”

The Other Greek Woman

“Felson’s Penelope, who seems, in all probability, very close to Homer’s Penelope, is the faithful wife of Odysseus, but she is also the independent and flirtatious matriarch who rules over her household and teases the suitors, whom she views as her ‘geese.’”

An Exercise in Polemic

The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785–1800, by Conor Cruise O’Brien. University of Chicago Press, 1996, 367 pp., $30 cloth.In The Long Affair, Conor Cruise O’Brien challenges professional historians’ hagiographic assessment of America’s...

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Hope or Despair? Roger Kimball and the Future of Culture

The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia by Roger Kimball. St. Augustine’s Press, 2012. Hardcover, 360 pp., $35. For those who cherish the life of the mind, one of the saddest events of 2012 was the death of the great historian Jacques...

Reflections on the Fundamental Law

The Conservative Constitution, by Russell Kirk. Regnery Gateway, 1990. Hardcover, 241 pp., $22.95 (as reviewed). Revised and expanded as Rights and Duties, with an introduction by Russell Hittinger (Spence, 1997).I first came across Russell Kirk’s writing forty-two...

The Persistence of History

After Tocqueville: The Promise and Failure of Democracy by Chilton Williamson, Jr. ISI Books, 2012 Hardcover, 288 pages, $28Twenty years ago, as the Cold War ended with the triumph of the West over Communism, Francis Fukuyama proclaimed the “end of history,” by which...

A Blinkered Life of Burke

The Great Melody: A Thematic Biography and Commented Anthology of Edmund Burke, by Conor Cruise O’Brien. University of Chicago Press, 1992.Paper 692 pp., $34.95. Conor Cruise O’Brien had a distinguished career before writing this book. He served in Ireland’s...

Testing the Metaphor

Extreme Metaphors: Selected Interviews with J. G. Ballard, 1967–2008, Edited by Simon Sellars and Dan O’Hara. Fourth Estate, 2012. Hardcover, 304 pages, £25.In the program Frost on Interviews, recently rebroadcast on British television, the distinguished...

Burke Endures

The Enduring Edmund Burke, edited by Ian Crowe. Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1997. 221pp., $25 cloth.1997 marked the bicentenary of Edmund Burke’s death, the perfect occasion to measure the enduring relevance of his thought. What endures, amply evident from this...

Bloodied Beauty

The Poetics of Evil: Toward an Aesthetic Theodicy by Philip Tallon. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Cloth, 266 pages, $74.While preparing an anthology, I once spent several months researching the “problem of evil.” I remember learning about genocides. Not...

The Book Gallery

A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.

There's still time to sign up to join the @KirkCenter for the McLellan Prizes Gala in DC on November 19 https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/2025-mclellan-prizes

In honor of longtime @ubookman editor Gerald J. Russello, enjoy this Russello Classic, "Christopher Dawson and Pluralism."

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