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.

Defending the Christian Faith

“In 100 Tough Questions For Catholics: Common Obstacles To Faith Today… David G. Bonagura, Jr. gives bite-sized answers to dozens of big questions about the faith.”

How to Love What is Permanent

“Throughout the book, Gibbs pleads with his readers that we not only think of the soul in terms of salvation but also in terms of health. Good taste won’t save one’s soul. But it will nourish the soul and incline the soul towards virtue much more than the bad taste we will acquire from mediocre things.”

Personalism in the Age of AI

“Personalism is a philosophical movement that places the human person at the center of inquiry, affirming the inherent dignity, value, and uniqueness of each individual. While it spans both religious and secular traditions, its common thread is a commitment to defending the irreducible reality of the person in an age increasingly shaped by systems, technologies, and abstractions.”

Christopher Dawson and Pluralism

“In particular, I want to examine three aspects of Dawson’s thought: his conclusion that cultures, especially Western culture, historically have been pluralist; his contention that a pluralism of cultures preserves a sphere of freedom from dominant modern ideologies that would eliminate that freedom; and finally, Dawson’s conviction that a pluralist world represents a new opportunity for evangelization.”

On Being a Basel Professor

On Essays and LettersIn Walter Kaufmann’s chronology of Nietzsche’s life, under 1889, it states briefly, that “Nietzsche becomes insane early in January in Turin.” Insanity, evidently, is no impediment to writing letters. Chesterton said that the maniac was the man...

The Art of Intimacy

The Literary Correspondence of Donald Davidson and Allen Tate edited by John Tyree Fain and Thomas Daniel Young. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1974. $15.00 Of those sources ordinarily consulted by literary historians and critics, letters are surely among...

Undoing the Ties that Bind

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010 by Charles Murray. New York: Crown Forum, 2012, 416 pp., hardcover, $27. In America, it is currently difficult to define what it means to be an American. Not anecdotally, as in “what does it mean to you?” or “what...

Kirk in Time

In an article in the February 13, 2012 TIME magazine, “The Conservative Identity Crisis,” the author says that “modern conservatism was born in the early 1950s” when “a young writer named Russell Kirk unearthed a rich philosophical tradition going back to British...

Defending the Humane Tradition

The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry, edited by Mark T. Mitchell and Nathan Schlueter. ISI Books, 2011. Cloth, 336 pages, $30. Reviewed by Tobias J. Lanz Wendell Berry is one of America’s most ardent defenders of the humane tradition—one of the few viable alternatives...

The Private World of Unamuno

The Private World of Unamuno

An Historical Note and Commentary. The Private World in Selected Works of Miguel de Unamuno, in seven volumes. Translated by Anthony Kerrigan; edited and annotated by Anthony Kerrigan and Martin Nozick. Bollingen Series; Princeton University Press, 1967–1985.“We are...

Eliot Through His Letters

The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Vol. II: 1923–1925 (U.S. Edition) edited by Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton. Yale University Press, 2011. 878 pp. $45. Since the first volume of Eliot’s letters (1898–1922) appeared in 1988, scholars and enthusiasts waited impatiently for...

The Light Invisible

T. S. Eliot (Longman Critical Readers Series) edited and introduced by Harriet Davidson. Longman (London), 210 pp., $69.95 cloth, 1999. The current dominance of postmodern literary theory in the Academy may be illustrated by an experience of mine at the relatively...

Outposts of Culture

The Criterion: Cultural Politics and Periodical Networks in Inter-War Britain by Jason Harding. Oxford University Press (New York, New York) 250 pp., $55.00 cloth, 2002.In the final issueof the Criterion, which appeared in January 1939, T. S. Eliot wrote that...

The Book Gallery

A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.

How to Love What is Permanent
Sarah Reardon on "Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity" by Joshua Gibbs.
@CirceInstitute

Personalism in the Age of AI Grant R. Martsolf on "Personalism for the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honor of David Walsh" Edited by Thomas W. Holman and Richard Avramenko.
@RLPublisher

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