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.
Christopher Lasch, Conservative?
Hope in a Scattering Time: A Life of Christopher Lasch by Eric Miller. Eerdmans, 2010. Cloth, 394 pages, $32. Christopher Lasch (1932–1994) has often posed a categorical problem for conservatives despite his insightful criticisms of liberalism. On many issues,...
The Household Gods of Freedom
John Randolph of Roanoke: A Study in American Politics by Russell Kirk. Third ed., with select letters & speeches. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1978. [Fourth edition, 1997, cloth $24, paper $14.50.] For Southerners of my antique persuasion, Russell Kirk’s John Randolph...
The Kind of Man Modernity Can Afford
Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist: How to Explain the World Without Becoming a Bore by Peter L. Berger. Prometheus Books, 2011, 264pp, hardcover, $26.A good friend studied sociology at Boston University where Peter Berger spent much of his career. He recalls...
What Is Happening to History?
In 1979 millions of Americans will have spent twenty-three to twenty-six years (about one-third of their expectable lifespan) in schools without having had a single history course. During the late Sixties the majority of colleges and universities abandoned all history...
Freedom Complex
On the Road to Emmaus: The Catholic Dialogue with America and Modernity by Glenn W. Olsen. The Catholic University of America Press, 2012. 303 pp., $70. The Gospel account of the disciples meeting Christ on the road to Emmaus has long been understood as a metaphor for...
Belloc’s Social Thought
Hilaire Belloc, Edwardian Radical by John P. McCarthy. Liberty Press, 1978 [IHS Press, 2009, 373 pages.] To have known someone very intimately and loved him very dearly is not a good qualification for making a useful judgment of his work. Under these limitations, not...
Charles W. Colson
The Russell Kirk Center is sad to hear of the death of Chuck Colson. He will mostly be remembered for the wonderful work he did with prisoners, giving their lives dignity and meaning. After his time in prison, Colson devoted himself to cultural renewal, which he saw...
Adrienne Rich and an Assessment of Contemporary American Poetry
Even measured against the hyperbole of her obituaries, which are less about the quality and resonance of her poetry and more about the ideologies of her admirers, it is possible to assess the public value of contemporary American poetry in the context of Adrienne Rich’s words.
Poetically Thinking
The Poetry of Thought: From Hellenism to Celan by George Steiner. New Directions, 2012. 224 pages, $25. In an often-cited passage of Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Monsieur Jourdain explains to the Maître de Philosophie that he wants to write a love note to...
The Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.
