The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Watch James Panero of the New Criterion discuss “The Urbanity of Russell Kirk” at the 2025 Gerald Russello Memorial Lecture.

The Urbanity of Russell Kirk

“The urban fabric must also be mended and darned through continuous upkeep. The city is not yours to experiment. From Russell to Russello, our ancestral spirits cast their shadows whether or not we choose to observe the city of god in the cities of men.”

Marxism and the Rising Generation

“Gonzalez and Gorka have performed an important service in bringing together a wide range of fact and theory and in establishing a coherent line stretching directly from Marx through many important figures to the present day.”

Cracking the Code to Civilization

“In a world flooded with online influencers, ‘red pill’ rhetoric, and algorithmic posturing, Newell offers something older, wiser, and far superior: a code of manliness rooted in the Western tradition of virtue, character, and service. His message is that true manliness is not a pose or performance; it is the integration of moral and intellectual excellence, what he calls ‘the manly heart.’”

France and the Problem of Abstraction

“…French people’s love for ideas, indeed for ideology, often puts them at odds with the pragmatic requisites of a mature democracy and with reality itself. France is, as she very aptly puts it, ‘a country of dreamers who fall into melancholy when reality catches up with them.’ But far from being merely a psychological explanation for French unhappiness, this idealism is the key to a political understanding of our complicated relationship with the very principle of democracy.”

Many Liberalisms

Against Liberalism, by John Kekes. Cornell University Press, 1997, 287 pp., $30 cloth. Before one can be “against” something, one has to have a fairly clear definition of what that something is. Thus, John Kekes’s new book, Against Liberalism, begins by trying to list...

What We’re Reading (Summer 2012)

The Bookman is a reliable source for books worth reading, thanks in no small part to our reviewers, who cull through the massive numbers of books published to focus on those worth reading, discussing, and digesting. So we have asked some of our regular contributors...

For a Thousand Memes to Sing

Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self by Marilynne Robinson. Yale University Press, 2010. 176 pages, $24.Marilynne Robinson is America’s leading literary Calvinist. This title may give her short shrift, for she is also a...

Liberal Idealism Critiqued

Cultural Conservatism, Political Liberalism: From Criticism to Cultural Studies by James Seaton. University of Michigan Press, 1996. 287 pp., $42.50 cloth.This wonderful book defends a tradition of American cultural self-criticism that includes Irving Babbitt, H. L....

Signs of Contradiction

The Pen and the Cross: Catholicism and English Literature, 1850–2000 by Richard Griffiths. Continuum (London & New York) xii + 260 pp., $35 cloth, 2010.In 1989, Gregory Wolfe uttered a cri de coueur bemoaning academic neglect of the modern “Catholic Intellectual...

The Perceptivity of Isaac Hecker

Isaac T. Hecker, The Diary: Romantic Religion in Ante-Bellum America edited by John Farina. Paulist Press (“Sources of American Spirituality” Series) 1988, 456 pp., $14.95 cloth. Americans are an incorrigibly religious people. In spite of the predictions—primarily by...

A Necessary Symbiosis

America’s Spiritual Capital by Nicholas Capaldi and Theodore Roosevelt Malloch St Augustine’s Press (South Bend, Indiana), 2012. Paper, 176 pages, $17. Over the past thirty years, increasing numbers of social scientists and economists have invested more time in...

On the Depths of Villainy

On Essays and LettersProbably the most famous letter writer of the ancient world was Cicero. In 59 B.C., Cicero wrote to Gaius Scribonius: “There are many sorts of letters. But there is one unmistakable sort, which actually caused letter-writing to be invented in the...

Men with Lit Matches

Fahrenheit 451, The Fiftieth Anniversary Edition by Ray Bradbury. Simon & Schuster, 2003. 208 pages, hardcover, $23.In the spring of 1950, in the basement of the UCLA library, Ray Bradbury recorded the future on a coin-operated typewriter by typing out what would...

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.

Cracking the Code to Civilization
@CliffordBates12 on "The Code of Man: Love, Courage, Pride, Family, Country" (2nd Edition) by @waller_newell

Marxism and the Rising Generation
Jeffrey Folks on "NextGen Marxism: What It Is and How to Combat It" by @Gundisalvus and Katharine Cornell Gorka @EncounterBooks

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