The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Join Kirktober and help support the mission of the University Bookman

 

Each week the Bookman brings you fresh reviews of the books that build culture, and essays that enliven the Permanent Things. Last year nearly 90,000 visitors engaged with the Bookman’s reviews, all free of charge and with no advertising to disrupt the reading experience. Our writers are touching hearts and minds across the globe with their reviews, bringing wisdom, creativity, and beauty to bear on the most important conversations happening in literature and culture.

Would you consider a gift to help us continue this work?

If just 1 in 4 of our readers contributed $10, we’d dramatically increase our capacity to recruit the brightest young writers and tackle more books and topics, all with a Kirkian angle. We’ve set a goal of raising $20k this month in order to continue our mission. Exceeding this amount will allow us to expand our work even more.

If you love the Bookman, and read us with regularity, we’d greatly appreciate your generous support this month.

With gratitude,

Luke Sheahan, Ph.D., editor
The University Bookman

P.S. As a special thank you to all Bookman supporters this month, we’ll send you a link to an audio recording of Ex Tenebris, one of Kirk’s best ghostly short stories. We think you’ll really enjoy it.

Campaign Progress

John Adams: Russell Kirk’s Founding Federalist

“…[Kirk] located the mainstream of the American Founding not with the Jeffersonian Republicans, but with their rivals in the Federalist party. Kirk admired them not only as practical statesmen, but also as anti-revolutionary thinkers in their own right. As he put it, the Constitution they supported was both ‘the most successful conservative device in the history of the world’ and a ‘great monument’ to the Federalists.”

What the American Revolution Secured: Order, Justice, and Freedom

Throughout the semiquincentennial year celebrating America’s independence, The University Bookman will invite a range of writers and speakers to contribute to a series drawing upon Russell Kirk’s work on the American Revolution and the constitutional order it secured.

The Brothers Stuart and the Rise of Protestant England

“…Belloc remains a draught of fresh air and a happy antidote to the official version of English national history, with its idealized tale of public-spirited reforms and liberal advances broadening down to the happy present.”

The Fog of the American War for Independence

“Academic and popular history of the period has long noted the early intimidation and violence that accompanied the rise of an American political consciousness and revolutionary movement.”

“To Think Faith” as Educators

“…faith and pedagogy should be in harmony. Smith’s guide is not a theory of faith and teaching or how to sprinkle faith within teaching. ‘It offers repeated practice at noticing and thinking through ways in which faith and the process of teaching might connect in everyday practice,’ in the mundane moments of elementary, secondary, or higher education classrooms.”

Call for Proposals

Our friend and Bookman contributor Lee Trepanier writes to us about a new series he is launching for Lexington Books: Lexington Books is pleased to announce the launch of the following new book series: Politics, Literature, and Film. We are actively seeking proposals...

It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s J. Alfred Prufrock!

It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s J. Alfred Prufrock!

A conversation with Julian PetersJulian Peters is in the process of creating a comic book adaptation of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” He graciously agreed to an interview with poetry critic and comic book aficionado, Micah Mattix, to discuss the...

A Dark Prospect

The Future of Literature, by Arther S. Trace Jr. New York: Phaedra Publishers, Inc., 1972.Arther Trace has written an aggressive little book. He is provoked with his peers in the literary community, and he has advanced a number of explanations for his wrath. In both...

The Conservative Mind at Sixty—in St Andrews

The Conservative Mind at Sixty—in St Andrews

Annette Kirk and several friends and Wilbur Fellows traveled in October to Saint Andrews, Scotland, as part of the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of publication of The Conservative Mind. Alvino-Mario Fantini has written an article for The American Conservative...

A Dark Path to Recovery

The Loss and Recovery of Truth: Selected Writings by Gerhart Niemeyer. Edited by Michael Henry. St. Augustine’s Press, 2013. Hardcover, 648 pages, $60. Gerhart Niemeyer (1907–1997) brought to the study of political science a philosophical sensitivity born of his...

These Marks of Remembrance

These Marks of Remembrance

Collected Letters of John Randolph of Roanoke to Dr. John Brockenbrough, 1812–1833. Edited by Kenneth Shorey, with a foreword by Russell Kirk. Transaction Books, 1988. Hardcover, 192 pages [e-text]. John Randolph of Roanoke was—even for his warmest admirers—a most...

‘As You Wish’

True (Self-)Love and The Princess BrideThe early Christian theologian Augustine, in The City of God, relates a story of an encounter between Alexander the Great, emperor of the known world, and a common pirate. When Alexander confronts the pirate about his...

Reading Recommendations for 2014

Contributors and friends of the Bookman share books of note from the past year's reading in many different genres.Matthew Boudway, Commonweal Julian Barnes’s Levels of Life is a kind of sequel to his 2008 book Nothing to Be Frighted Of, which was about the various...

Russell Kirk as Historian

Much has been said and written this year about the sixtieth anniversary of publication of Russell Kirk’s Conservative Mind. The well deserved attention has, however, generally overlooked a critical facet of the public role of the book and, as important, of Kirk...

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.

Kirk saw poetry, fiction, tradition, and restraint as essential to understanding America and preserving its character. In his review of "On America," @cjscalia explores Kirk’s vision of the founding, statesmanship, literature, and the enduring ideas that have shaped the republic.

The Audacious Russell Kirk
Bruce P. Frohnen reviews "On America: How to Understand the Legacy of 1776" by Russell Kirk. Edited by Michael Lucchese.

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