The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

What the American Revolution Secured: Order, Justice, and Freedom

Throughout the semiquincentennial year celebrating America’s independence, The University Bookman 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.

To Find Eyes to See

“Hren selects earnest classics that have stood the test of time—books that generations of readers have found edifying and moving. But also, in the introduction and conclusion alike, Hren returns to another key point of fiction: it doesn’t just help us see extraordinary truth, although it can. More important is that fiction gives us eyes to see the transcendence of ordinary lives, including our own.”

Rural America as It Really Is

“Harold Bell Wright, regardless of how literary tastemakers viewed him in the 1920s, is the central figure in the origin of Branson. Though denigrated by the Baldwins and H. L. Menckens of his day, Wright was one of the century’s best-selling novelists.”

The Poet Watches Birds

“Jennifer A. Hartenburg’s debut collection of poems… offers such a poetic practice of waking, attending, and caring. These are poems rich with the life of the world, flocking with birds and bees both literal and metaphorical, but also closely attentive to the quiddities of language and the motions of the soul.”

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...

Ray Bradbury, In Memoriam

Ray Bradbury, In Memoriam

Ray Bradbury, a close friend of Russell Kirk, died on June 5, 2012 at age 91 in Los Angeles. He was the author of numerous novels and stories beloved by several generations of readers worldwide, especially The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine,...

‘Warm with Generous Impulse’: Ray Bradbury, In Memoriam

Russell Kirk on Ray Bradbury, on the occasion of the death of Bradbury.A close friend of Russell Kirk, Ray Bradbury died on June 5, 2012 at age 91 in Los Angeles. He was the author of numerous novels and stories beloved by several generations of readers worldwide,...

On Statesmanship: The Case of John Adams

This article is the second of two parts and is based on a talk delivered to a Colloquium on Statesmanship and the Constitution at the Rochester Institute of Technology, April 13–14, 2012. Part One is here.So now we come to the crux of the issue: statesmanship means...

Practical Sermons

Redeeming the Time by Russell Kirk. Edited with an introduction by Jeffrey O. Nelson. Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1996, 321 pp., $25 cloth, $15 paper. This posthumously published collection of Russell Kirk’s essays once again reminds us of the extent of our...

‘The Farther from the Scene of Horror, the Easier the Talk’

‘The Farther from the Scene of Horror, the Easier the Talk’

Paul Fussell, who died this month, was perhaps more a curmudgeon than a conservative, but his harsh language was intended to counteract propaganda and euphemism and so recover the reality of the human in the face of war and other cultural assaults. Robert Stove provides an obituary appropriate for Memorial Day.

On Statesmanship: The Case of John Adams

This article is the first of two parts and is based on a talk delivered to a Colloquium on Statesmanship and the Constitution at the Rochester Institute of Technology, April 13–14, 2012.What kind of person is worthy of being called a “statesman”? What type of...

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.

To Find Eyes to See
@NadyaWilliams81 on "More Than a Matter of Taste: The Moral Imagination and the Spirit of Literature" by Joshua Hren. @WordOnFire Luminor

Rural America as It Really Is
Jason C. Phillips on "Faith, Family, and Flag: Branson Entertainment and the Idea of America" by Joanna Dee Das. @UChicagoPress

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