The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Join friends of the Bookman in New York City on December 8, 2025 for the Gerald 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.”

How to Love What is Permanent

“Throughout the book, Gibbs pleads with his readers that we not only think of the soul in terms of salvation but also in terms of health. Good taste won’t save one’s soul. But it will nourish the soul and incline the soul towards virtue much more than the bad taste we will acquire from mediocre things.”

Personalism in the Age of AI

“Personalism is a philosophical movement that places the human person at the center of inquiry, affirming the inherent dignity, value, and uniqueness of each individual. While it spans both religious and secular traditions, its common thread is a commitment to defending the irreducible reality of the person in an age increasingly shaped by systems, technologies, and abstractions.”

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.”

Valerie Eliot (1926–2012)

We honor the life and memory of Valerie Eliot, who died earlier this month. Kirk Center Secretary Dr. Ben Lockerd has written a brief memorial for a charming lady who carefully guarded her husband’s literary legacy.

On Valerie Eliot

Dr. Lockerd reflects on the life of Valerie Eliot.Valerie Eliot’s life was a strange sort of Cinderella story. She became an admirer of T. S. Eliot’s poetry at a young age and eagerly applied later for the job of secretary to Mr. Eliot at Faber and Faber. Ten years...

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...

The Book Gallery

A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.

How to Love What is Permanent
Sarah Reardon on "Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity" by Joshua Gibbs.
@CirceInstitute

Personalism in the Age of AI Grant R. Martsolf on "Personalism for the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honor of David Walsh" Edited by Thomas W. Holman and Richard Avramenko.
@RLPublisher

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