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.”

A Church of One

Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty by John M. Barry. Viking, 2012, Cloth, 480 pages, $35. Puritans came to America wanting to found a church more faithful to their beliefs. But they had a problem. In...

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...

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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