The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

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.

To Find Eyes to See

“Hren selects earnest classics that have stood the test of time—books that generations of readers have found edifying and moving. But also, in the introduction and conclusion alike, Hren returns to another key point of fiction: it doesn’t just help us see extraordinary truth, although it can. More important is that fiction gives us eyes to see the transcendence of ordinary lives, including our own.”

Rural America as It Really Is

“Harold Bell Wright, regardless of how literary tastemakers viewed him in the 1920s, is the central figure in the origin of Branson. Though denigrated by the Baldwins and H. L. Menckens of his day, Wright was one of the century’s best-selling novelists.”

The Poet Watches Birds

“Jennifer A. Hartenburg’s debut collection of poems… offers such a poetic practice of waking, attending, and caring. These are poems rich with the life of the world, flocking with birds and bees both literal and metaphorical, but also closely attentive to the quiddities of language and the motions of the soul.”

What We’re Reading (Summer 2013)

Last year’s summer reading list was justifiably popular, so the Bookman pleased to return with another round of contributions from our reviewers, who have culled through the massive numbers of books published to focus on those worth reading, discussing, and digesting....

Pragmatists versus Agrarians?

Superfluous Southerners: Cultural Conservatism and the South, 1920–1990 by John J. Langdale. University of Missouri Press, 2012. Cloth, 192 pages, $50. (Kindle ed.) John J. Langdale’s Superfluous Southerners paints a magnificent portrait of Southern conservatism and...

Burke, Party, and the Human Person

JP O’Malley interviews Jesse Norman, political thinker and MP, and author of the new book, Edmund Burke: The First Conservative, on Burke as a postmodern thinker, proponent of political parties, agent of change, and other themes.

The Critics of Burke

The Critics of Burke

Edmund Burke: Appraisals and Applications, edited by Daniel E. Ritchie. Transaction Publishers, 1990, xxvi + 291 pp., $29.95. Daniel Ritchie has given the scholarly world a comprehensive and useful anthology of criticism of Edmund Burke’s writings. I do disagree most...

The Moral Imperative of Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke: The Enlightenment and Revolution by Peter J. Stanlis, Foreword by Russell Kirk. Transaction Publishers, 1991. xxi +259 pp. $40. Edmund Burke: Prescription and Providence by Francis Canavan. Carolina Academic Press, 1987. xiv +183 pp. $24.There has been a...

On General Wolfe’s Preference

On Essays and LettersWill Cuppy (1884–1948) was born in Auburn, Indiana, and he is buried there. He attended the University of Chicago and dithered with a higher degree. He wrote a number of books, the first of which I have. It is called How to Get from January to...

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.

To Find Eyes to See
@NadyaWilliams81 on "More Than a Matter of Taste: The Moral Imagination and the Spirit of Literature" by Joshua Hren. @WordOnFire Luminor

Rural America as It Really Is
Jason C. Phillips on "Faith, Family, and Flag: Branson Entertainment and the Idea of America" by Joanna Dee Das. @UChicagoPress

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