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.’”

Pure Narrative Pleasure

Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version by Philip Pullman. Viking Adult, 2012, Cloth, 400 pages, $28.My earliest introduction to story came from two sources, the orange Childcraft books devoted to fairytales and Arthur Maxwell’s blue Bible Story...

Living Conservatism

Virtue and the Promise of Conservatism: the Legacy of Burke and Tocqueville, by Bruce Frohnen. University Press of Kansas, 1993. Cloth, 264 pages, $25.Conservatism lives. It continues to exercise its power over bright young minds. It also shows us a way of life, how...

Jacques Barzun, 1907–2012

“Le style est l’homme,” wrote the Comte de Buffon. Applied to Jacques Barzun, Buffon’s statement reveals a man at once elegant but unpretentious, a man both sophisticated and humane. Born on November 30, 1907 in Créteil, France, Jacques Barzun was early initiated into...

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...

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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