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 Urbanity of Russell Kirk

“The urban fabric must also be mended and darned through continuous upkeep. The city is not yours to experiment. From Russell to Russello, our ancestral spirits cast their shadows whether or not we choose to observe the city of god in the cities of men.”

Marxism and the Rising Generation

“Gonzalez and Gorka have performed an important service in bringing together a wide range of fact and theory and in establishing a coherent line stretching directly from Marx through many important figures to the present day.”

Cracking the Code to Civilization

“In a world flooded with online influencers, ‘red pill’ rhetoric, and algorithmic posturing, Newell offers something older, wiser, and far superior: a code of manliness rooted in the Western tradition of virtue, character, and service. His message is that true manliness is not a pose or performance; it is the integration of moral and intellectual excellence, what he calls ‘the manly heart.’”

France and the Problem of Abstraction

“…French people’s love for ideas, indeed for ideology, often puts them at odds with the pragmatic requisites of a mature democracy and with reality itself. France is, as she very aptly puts it, ‘a country of dreamers who fall into melancholy when reality catches up with them.’ But far from being merely a psychological explanation for French unhappiness, this idealism is the key to a political understanding of our complicated relationship with the very principle of democracy.”

Capitalism vs. the Free Market

The Morality of Capitalism: What Your Professors Won’t Tell You edited by Tom Palmer. Jameson Books, Inc., 2011. Paperback, 129 pp., $8.95. Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy by Robert Sirico. Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2012. Hardcover, 213...

Tolkien and the Great Tale

The Christian World of ‘The Hobbit’ by Devin Brown. Abingdon Press, 2012 193 pp., $14.99 paper.J. R. R. Tolkien’s fame as a founder of modern fantasy and as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century is assured. But he is still often not recognized...

Farming, Community, and Culture

Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, by Wendell Berry. Pantheon Books 1994, 208 pp., $20, cloth; $10 paper. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely. —Edmund Burke Wendell Berry’s career has spanned more than thirty years and this newest collection...

Marital Distress and the 2012 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize

Stag’s Leap: Poems, by Sharon Olds. Knopf, 2012. 112 pages, Hardcover, $27; Paperback, $17.On January 15, 2013, the Poetry Book Society in London announced that the winner of the annual T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry (awarded to the best new collection of poetry...

Studies in Burke and His Time

Studies in Burke and His Time

Welcome to Studies in Burke and His Time, the journal of the Edmund Burke Society of America. Our journal editors are Elizabeth Lambert and Michael Brown, and the executive editor is Ian Crowe. Please direct all articles, review submissions, and correspondence in the...

(The Future of) Liberalism in Our Disordered Age

Post-Liberalism: The Death of a Dream by Melvyn L. Fein. Transaction Press, 2012. Cloth, 359 pages, $40.Reality is never as we think of it. Yet we must live, act, think, choose, and find our place within some story about reality that purports to lay out the...

Prog Rock and the Permanent Things: More with Bradley Birzer

Prog Rock and the Permanent Things: More with Bradley Birzer

This is the second of two parts of a conversation with Bradley Birzer, who holds the Russell Amos Kirk Chair of American Studies at Hillsdale College and is one of his generation’s most important scholars of conservative thought and the tradition of Christian...

Think Local, Act Local

How to Think Seriously About the Planet: The Case for an Environmental Conservatism by Roger Scruton. Oxford University Press, 2012. Hardcover, 464 pages, $30.The political left has long dominated the modern environmental movement. British philosopher Roger Scruton...

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.

Cracking the Code to Civilization
@CliffordBates12 on "The Code of Man: Love, Courage, Pride, Family, Country" (2nd Edition) by @waller_newell

Marxism and the Rising Generation
Jeffrey Folks on "NextGen Marxism: What It Is and How to Combat It" by @Gundisalvus and Katharine Cornell Gorka @EncounterBooks

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