The University Bookman
Reviewing Books that Build Culture
Books in Little
Beyond Distributism by Thomas E. Woods Acton Institute, 2012, 79 pages, $3. The Bookman has long been an admirer of what has been called distributism, a social/economic theory that combines a preference for localism in politics and business, a strong agrarian focus,...
Cliché on a Hill
A conversation with Richard M. Gamble.Professor Richard Gamble, a Bookman contributor, holds the Anna Margaret Ross Alexander chair in history and political science at Hillsdale College. He has recently published In Search of the City on a Hill: The Making and...
Our Rascally World
On Essays and LettersIn a letter of Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) addressed to the poet Alexander Pope (1688–1744), dated September 29, 1725, Swift spoke of returning to the grand monde of Dublin, to deal with various curates and vicars, and to “correct allcorruptions...
Kirk’s most popular book
What was Russell Kirk’s most popular book during his lifetime? Perhaps surprisingly, it is the novel, Old House of Fear, which the New York Times called “a grandly satisfactory tale of vivid adventure.” Eerdmans released a new edition in 2007, and this morally weighty...
To College Students Considering a Course in American Poetry
I dwell in Possibility — Emily Dickinson Those who attend or are about to attend college may be surprised todiscover the confluence and influence of great poetry written in English at the beginning of the last century. Whether you agree or disagree with the often dark...
The Bookman goes back to school
The University Bookman has long had a focus on education. Indeed, the archive reveals numerous reviews of college and high-school textbooks, and of course our founder Russell Kirk wrote often on education. As we approach the beginning of another school year, we asked...
The Declaration as the Constitution
Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution: A Disputed Question by Harry V. Jaffa. Regnery Gateway, 1994, 386 pp., $24 hardcover. Conservatives today are generally devoted to the scheme of constitutional interpretation known as “original intent...
Resisting Ideology’s Reductionism
The New Jacobinism: America as Revolutionary State (2d expanded ed.) by Claes G. Ryn. National Humanities Institute, 2011, 163 pp., paper, $15.Near the end of his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke praised what he called the “combining mind” as...
An American Classic
Democracy and Leadership by Irving Babbitt. Foreword by Russell Kirk, Liberty Classics, 1979, 390 pp. The appearance of a new edition of Irving Babbitt’s Democracy and Leadership (first published in 1924) is one sign among many that interest in this controversial...
The Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.