The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

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Each week the Bookman brings you fresh reviews of the books that build culture, and essays that enliven the Permanent Things. Last year nearly 90,000 visitors engaged with the Bookman’s reviews, all free of charge and with no advertising to disrupt the reading experience. Our writers are touching hearts and minds across the globe with their reviews, bringing wisdom, creativity, and beauty to bear on the most important conversations happening in literature and culture.

Would you consider a gift to help us continue this work?

If just 1 in 4 of our readers contributed $10, we’d dramatically increase our capacity to recruit the brightest young writers and tackle more books and topics, all with a Kirkian angle. We’ve set a goal of raising $20k this month in order to continue our mission. Exceeding this amount will allow us to expand our work even more.

If you love the Bookman, and read us with regularity, we’d greatly appreciate your generous support this month.

With gratitude,

Luke Sheahan, Ph.D., editor
The University Bookman

P.S. As a special thank you to all Bookman supporters this month, we’ll send you a link to an audio recording of Ex Tenebris, one of Kirk’s best ghostly short stories. We think you’ll really enjoy it.

Campaign Progress

John Adams: Russell Kirk’s Founding Federalist

“…[Kirk] located the mainstream of the American Founding not with the Jeffersonian Republicans, but with their rivals in the Federalist party. Kirk admired them not only as practical statesmen, but also as anti-revolutionary thinkers in their own right. As he put it, the Constitution they supported was both ‘the most successful conservative device in the history of the world’ and a ‘great monument’ to the Federalists.”

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.

The Brothers Stuart and the Rise of Protestant England

“…Belloc remains a draught of fresh air and a happy antidote to the official version of English national history, with its idealized tale of public-spirited reforms and liberal advances broadening down to the happy present.”

The Fog of the American War for Independence

“Academic and popular history of the period has long noted the early intimidation and violence that accompanied the rise of an American political consciousness and revolutionary movement.”

“To Think Faith” as Educators

“…faith and pedagogy should be in harmony. Smith’s guide is not a theory of faith and teaching or how to sprinkle faith within teaching. ‘It offers repeated practice at noticing and thinking through ways in which faith and the process of teaching might connect in everyday practice,’ in the mundane moments of elementary, secondary, or higher education classrooms.”

Wishing him well . . .

The Russell Kirk Center extends its good wishes to Edwin Feulner on his retirement as president of The Heritage Foundation. We have deeply appreciated his long-time support of Russell Kirk’s thought and look forward to Ed’s ongoing contributions to American public...

The Conservative Mind Renewed

The Conservative Mind, From Burke to Santayana by Russell Kirk. South Bend, Indiana: Gateway Editions, 1978. $5.95 in paperback. Sixth revised edition.For the radical libertarian, “it usually begins with Ayn Rand.” So, at least, claimed a book of that title published...

The Misremembered President

Coolidge by Amity Shlaes. HarperCollins, 2013. Hardback, 565 pages, $35. Coolidge. The title is as spare and direct as the subject. Building on her previous book, The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes might have added “The Forgotten President.” Then again, perhaps she...

Literature and the Call of Faith

An interview with Gregory WolfeGregory Wolfe is publisher of Image journal, author of books including Beauty Will Change the World, and now publisher of Slant Books. He spoke recently with the Bookman on the occasion of the release of the first book fromSlant. Greg,...

On Avoiding ‘Prosperous Wickedness’

On Essays and LettersOn my desk, I have a copy of the 2003 Penguin edition of Samuel Johnson, Selected Essays. When I turn on my computer to warm up, I have about two minutes of reading, which I do at random from Johnson. It is amazing what you find in Johnson. He was...

Out of the Nursery to College, Back to the Nursery

Anti-Intellectualism and Authentic Learning in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451In a letter dated January 22, 1951 to Richard Matheson from Ray Bradbury discussing “The Fireman,” the short story that would develop into Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury explains, in part, his...

Running About with Lit Matches

“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed,” Ray Bradbury writes in Fahrenheit 451. “As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over.” Regarding the friendship between Ray Bradbury and Russell Kirk—two writers...

The Marilyn Monroe of Modern Literature

An interview with Carl Rollyson.The University Bookman recently sat down with Carl Rollyson, past contributor to our special issue on biography and author of a new biography on the poet Sylvia Plath and of Amy Lowell: A New Biography, forthcoming in September 2013....

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.

Kirk saw poetry, fiction, tradition, and restraint as essential to understanding America and preserving its character. In his review of "On America," @cjscalia explores Kirk’s vision of the founding, statesmanship, literature, and the enduring ideas that have shaped the republic.

The Audacious Russell Kirk
Bruce P. Frohnen reviews "On America: How to Understand the Legacy of 1776" by Russell Kirk. Edited by Michael Lucchese.

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