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.
Kirk’s American Founding Documents and the Unwritten Constitution
“…[Kirk] understands that workable written constitutions must be based on an underlying and unwritten constitution found in the culture of the people.”
The Babbitt School of Conservatism
“Viereck and Kirk—the one a Pulitzer-winning poet, the other a highly regarded author of eerie fiction—understood the nexus of morality, imagination, and politics. But the businessmen, journalists, policy experts, and politicians who came to define the conservative movement just a few years after the appearance of The Conservative Mind did not.”
The Conservative Need for Conservative Philosophy
“Ryn does not take sides in the ideological wars but urges conservatives to reject ideology altogether and to engage in deeper philosophical thinking. Philosophy does the opposite of ideology. It recognizes complexity and gropes toward a deeper understanding of reality that builds on the insights of previous thinkers. There are no final answers in true philosophy… Moreover, monistic, ideological thinking is inconsistent with constitutional politics, which requires compromise and consensus.”
A Half Century of Conservative Criticism
“…the most important theme of his essays suggests that all the common answers about where conservatism went wrong avoid a more fundamental one: conservatives have been too obsessed with politics.”
Literary Virtue and Vice
“Griffis, Ooms, and Roberts offer practices of thought and attention that those eager to read deeply would do well to implement. Yet those eager to learn how Christianity ought to inform their reading and thinking would do well to consult other writers less concerned with rehearsing the language of our milieu, such as C.S. Lewis, Flannery O’Connor, T.S. Eliot, Dana Gioia.”
JP O’Malley Interviews Author Maurice Samuels
“‘Dreyfus’s Jewishness played a major role’ in convincing many within the army hierarchy to believe he was a traitor and a spy, Samuels stresses… This, in essence, is the main thesis put forward in [the book]. ‘Clearly, you cannot write about this case without mentioning the fact that Dreyfus was Jewish, or bringing up the role of antisemitism,’ the historian points out.”
The Left Wing Patriot
“A man of the left and an American patriot, [Peretz] is a rare bird today—and, therefore, possibly even a controversial one, not to mention an iconoclastic one.”
Will You Also Go Away?
“The suggestions that these True Confessions pose for renewal are aligned, whether they come from bishops or laypeople: we must recover the view that the Church is not an institution but a community founded on encountering Jesus Christ and living radically for him.”
Sailing East
“As we push deeper into the third decade of the twenty-first century, the sense of boredom and anxiety of the early twenty-first century only seems to increase. What is needed is a renewed sense of adventure, confidence, and patriotism—the same sense of adventure, confidence, and patriotism that propelled the East India Company to create the wealth and wonder of the modern world.”
The Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.
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