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.

A Problem Deeper than Groupthink

“Now a new volume comes our way from the busy desk of Robert P. George… an essay collection spanning subjects from Catholicism and civic order to ‘gnostic liberalism’ to the interplay of markets and civil society. Despite the broad subject matter, George’s overarching aim in this new collection is to discern how it is that civilization evolved from the ‘Age of Faith’ in the medieval period to the ‘Age of Reason’ of the Enlightenment and its aftermath, only to now arrive at what he calls the ‘Age of Feelings.’” 

Reconsidering Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Roosevelt’s true genius was the practice of politics. But his success at that practice did not come without costs of its own. Roosevelt may well have believed that his political success and his country’s economic recovery would proceed along parallel paths. But the evidence suggests otherwise. In fact, reading Beito leads one to surmise that the Rooseveltian preoccupation with the politics of leadership may well have significantly delayed and even retarded the very recovery that was supposed to result from his leadership.”

A Forgotten Russian Immigrant Poet in Hollywood

“Nostalgia unquestionably captivates all émigrés. There you may be, decades gone from the old country, and glad of it. Yet still you long for the taste of familiar foods, the sight of those Russian birch trees, and the sound of the language you never have the opportunity to speak outside the home.”

Seeing the True Presence

Seeing the True Presence

“…Heschmeyer examines the Eucharist in its Biblical, theological, philosophical, and historical contexts. ‘Sometimes,’ he notes, ‘to increase our understanding, we don’t need new information but a new way of thinking about the information that we already have.’”

Home, Sour Home

Home, Sour Home

“Beckeld finds oikophobia not only in the present-day United States but also across the West and in ancient Greece and Rome, eighteenth-century France, and twentieth-century Great Britain. Oikophobia’s onset is significant because it has weakened the places in which it appeared.”

Lincoln and the Democratic Cause

Lincoln and the Democratic Cause

“Professor Guelzo is prescient… in offering Lincoln’s contemplations on the meaning and purpose of the Civil War, including the possibility that the war was a providential necessity preceding an outcome, emancipation, and largely because race and slavery are central to Lincoln’s history as a great evil, our country’s original sin, and anathema to our democracy. “

JP O’Malley Interviews Author Frank Tallis

JP O’Malley Interviews Author Frank Tallis

“…is it possible to embrace Freud’s core ideas while also remaining critical of him? Tallis believes so. He claims Freud ‘was unquestionably a great writer, but he is often contradictory, and his ideas are generally not original.'”

Finding the Historical Vergil

Finding the Historical Vergil

“Sarah Ruden… takes a step back to remove Vergil from the constraints of later mythmaking and find the historical poet… As Ruden writes, ‘As always, there has to be something about the author himself that is vital to the thing called literary achievement.’”

America First—Or Last?

America First—Or Last?

“Paul Hollander, wherever he is, need not worry. The best book by far on an American romance with foreign dictators has long been–and remains–his Political Pilgrims.

The Soul Always Takes Priority

The Soul Always Takes Priority

“The book is a handbook for a Catholic death written by Nikolas T. Nikas, co-founder and president of the Bioethics Defense Fund, and Bruce W. Green, a former dean and law professor who serves as special counsel to the Bioethics Defense Fund. Presented in a Question and Answer format and split over eight parts, [it] offers answers to 123 questions a curious person might have… The appendices include, among other things, an essay on how to form a working conscience, a glossary, and an example of what a Catholic medical power of attorney might look like—useful for those who might not be able to afford to pay a lawyer to devise one for them. Reading the book is, quite literally, like having two lawyers explain the legal and moral ins and outs of end-of-life care.”

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.

A Forgotten Russian Immigrant Poet in Hollywood
@NadyaWilliams81 on "Sidetracked: Exile in Hollywood" by Alexander Voloshin. Translated by Boris Dralyuk. Paul Dry Books.

The Scientific Evidence for God
Thomas Griffin on "God, The Science, The Evidence: The Dawn of a Revolution" by Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies. Palomar Publishers.

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