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.”

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.”

Trust and Hope as the Final Words

“Each poem is biblically rooted, but Kohler draws on extra-biblical sources and her own creative imagination to ponder what her characters may have been thinking during the pivotal moments of their mostly undocumented lives. The result is a beautiful exploration into the hearts and minds of the women of the Bible—both named and unnamed—that leaves readers feeling as though the women are imminently present, sharing their innermost thoughts and the overlooked aspects of their experiences.”

The Other Greek Woman

“Felson’s Penelope, who seems, in all probability, very close to Homer’s Penelope, is the faithful wife of Odysseus, but she is also the independent and flirtatious matriarch who rules over her household and teases the suitors, whom she views as her ‘geese.’”

Memo to Irving Babbitt

One of the most influential critics in the history of American letters receives (posthumously) a note from a [then-] associate professor of English at Michigan State University. Dear Professor Babbitt, I have, of course, no way of knowing where you are at the moment,...

Political Correctness and the War Against Authority

Society Against Itself: Political Correctness and Organizational Self-Destruction by Howard S. Schwartz, Karnac Books, 2010. Paper, 240 pp. The congeries of ideological positions known as “political correctness” has long posed a threat to Western civilization. As an...

Witness over Sixty Years

Witness by Whittaker Chambers (Random House, 1952) Visitors to Ronald Reagan’s Rancho del Cielo, just north of Santa Barbara, will discover that the late president’s large bookshelf, just inside the front door of the main house, is filled largely with books on Western...

Fall Newsletter

The latest number of the Russell Kirk Center newsletter (Fall 2011) has just been posted. It features a profile of the new complete Kirk Bibliography, compiled by our archivist, Charles C. Brown. It also includes an interview with Márcia Xavier de Brito, who is...

Celebrated Minor Contemporary American Poetry

The Best American Poetry 2011 Edited by Kevin Young with David Lehman Scribner (New York, NY), 2011, xxvi + 211 pp., $35.00 Consider the following—“Rally”—the first poem in this year’s annual Best American Poetry series, reproduced in its entirety: The awesome weight...

‘The Greatest Fool That Ever Lived’

On Essays and Letters“It is easier to believe that one’s self is a fool than that Socrates was a fool; and yet, if he was not right, he must have been the greatest fool that ever lived.” —Robert Lynd, “On Not Being a Philosopher.” In book six of the Republic, the...

Lukacs and Kennan: Reflections on a Friendship

A Lukacs SymposiumThere are relationships, Michael Oakeshott once wrote, “in which no result is sought and which are engaged in for their own sake and enjoyed for what they are and not for what they provide. This is so of friendship.” John Lukacs could not have known,...

The Awful Responsibility of Time

John Lukacs and the Problem of American History A Lukacs SymposiumSoon now we shall go out of the house and go into the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time. Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men (1946) Throughout...

John Lukacs as Teacher

A Lukacs Symposium John P. Rossi For years the Reader’s Digest had a feature entitled “The Most Unforgettable Character I Ever Met.” For me that was John Lukacs and the meeting took place in 1955 during my sophomore year at La Salle College. As a freshman I had heard...

The Book Gallery

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

There's still time to sign up to join the @KirkCenter for the McLellan Prizes Gala in DC on November 19 https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/2025-mclellan-prizes

In honor of longtime @ubookman editor Gerald J. Russello, enjoy this Russello Classic, "Christopher Dawson and Pluralism."

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