The University Bookman
Reviewing Books that Build Culture
Grounding the Life of the Mind
Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America by Daniel J. Flynn. ISI Books (Wilmington, DE), 2011. 187 pp., $28 clothThe Great Books approach to education, promoted by one of the subjects of this book, Mortimer Adler, is noble in...
A Thundering Paradox of a Life
George F. Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis. New York: The Penguin Press. 2011. 784 pp. $40. William Manchester in his acclaimed biography of Douglas MacArthur, American Caesar, introduced his subject as a “thundering paradox of a man.” The same could be...
Man, Proud Man
Liberalism: A Counter-History by Domenico Losurdo, translated by Gregory Elliott. London and New York: Verso Books, 2011. Pages viii+375. $35. Paradox and irony immediately confront the historian of liberalism. Commonly understood as the tradition of political thought...
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
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...
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.
@ubookman The series seeks to advance understanding of the significance of the American founding to our times through fresh, concise presentations. The following piece by @ubookman editor @lsheahan sets the stage: https://buff.ly/Aakgs0W
Throughout the semiquincentennial year celebrating America’s independence, @ubookman will invite a range of writers and speakers to contribute to a series drawing upon Russell Kirk’s work on the American Revolution and the constitutional order it secured.
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