The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

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.”

Geopolitics and the Making of the Modern World

“Brands’s book should find a ready audience among those interested in developments in the international scene over the last century. It is particularly effective in dealing with the threat that China’s emerging power and influence pose to the West today…”

The Context for Human Dignity

“While the twentieth century was still sporadically marked by remnants of Christian influence and dominance, the twenty-first has seen the final divorce of the secular and sacred, and the consequences are evident. What Leo XIII warned of, the evils he battled, have been let loose, paradigmatically captured by Artificial Intelligence which poorly imitates and devalues that which makes us essentially human… We would do well then to read Hittinger’s book in reflecting on how to face these challenges.”

Between Greatness and Hubris 

“At the core of [the book] is the notion that while America is an exceptional nation, we are not immune from the perils that beset past countries and empires.”

The Gifts of the Present

Berkeley-Paris Express: A Lively Memoir of Studying Classical Music and Painting by Webster Young. Santa Fe, N.M.: Editions D’Auteurs, 2012, 347 pages, $14.50; Kindle Edition, $9.95. In his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” Tolkien famously wrote that God made men and women...

The Unknown Hegel

The Search for Historical Meaning: Hegel and the Postwar American Right by Paul Edward Gottfried. Dekalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986, Revised edition 2010. Paper, $24. Few prominent postwar conservative thinkers have credited Hegelian concepts...

Kirk’s Ghostly Tales

Jeffrey D. Pearce recently guest edited two “lib guides”—thematic lists of reading resources—for the library of Everett Community College in Everett, Washington. In “Ghostly Sightings...And Other Scary Stories...”, Pearce links to Russell Kirk’s short story anthology...

Glory and Indignity

John Randolph of Roanoke by David Johnson. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012 Cloth, 352 pages, $45. “I am an aristocrat. I love liberty, I hate equality.” Thus spoke John Randolph of Roanoke (1773–1833), one of the most curious, animated figures ever...

Sir Henry Sumner Maine on Democracy

Popular Government, by Henry Sumner Maine. Introduction by George W. Carey. Indianapolis: Liberty Classics [1885, 1976] [free online PDF edition at Liberty Fund]. It has been a good many years since the democratic political system, and all the principles upon which it...

Faith and Twelve Presidents

The Faiths of the Postwar Presidents: From Truman to Obama by David L. Holmes. University of Georgia Press, 2012 296 pages, $30.Since the founding of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies in the early seventeenth century, religion has powerfully affected...

History Resurgent

Historical Consciousness, or The Remembered Past by John Lukacs. New York: Harper & Row, 1968. [Rev ed. Transaction 1994, 411 pages.] “You couldn’t be more right,” is the warm affirmation of an amiable friend of mine that I would like to apply to this book. Dr....

Enoch Powell—Right from the start?

Enoch at 100 Edited by Greville Howard. London: Biteback, 2012, hardback, 320pp., £25. A century after his birth, the self-described “Tory anarchist” John Enoch Powell is still capable of arousing devotion or detestation. After his death in 1998, a major memorial...

Rediscovering a Neglected Conservative Mind

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, by James Fitzjames Stephen. Edited by Stuart D. Warner. Liberty Fund, Inc., 1993 xxix + 270 pp., $19.50 cloth; $7.50, paper. Although proclaimed by Sir Ernest Barker as “the finest exposition of conservative thought in the later half of...

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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