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.”

Fortunate Friendships

In this excerpt from his new memoir, The Man in the Middle, Tim Goeglein discusses the profound influence on his life of the thought and friendship of Russell Kirk.

Santayana’s Standing

A response to David Dilworth.David Dilworth’s review in the Spring 2011 University Bookman of George Santayana’s The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy and Character and Opinion in the United States (Yale UP, 2009) raises important questions about the permanent...

The Youthful Writings of Russell Kirk

The scribblings of Russell Kirk, as teenager and pre-teen, reveal a widely read, precocious and imaginative young man. Among the remnants of youth which are preserved one may find vastly detailed drawings of Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and all sorts of adventure...

An Everlasting Man of Letters

G. K. Chesterton: A Biography by Ian Ker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), xiv + 747 pp., $65.00 cloth Among the genres in which G. K. Chesterton wrote was critical biography. With typical paradox, Chesterton defined two duties for such authors that seem...

Mr. Conservative

Dr. Russell Kirk is to American conservatism what Edmund Burke was to British conservatism. My equation is a product of the catalyst of history. Before Burke stood up to the savagery and barbarism of the French Revolution, not one man in all Europe raised so...

Ghostly Kirk

In time for Halloween, "Ghostly Kirk," a site that tracks the ghostly tales of Russell Kirk, is now on the web, courtesy of Jeff Pearce.

Revisionist History at Its Best

Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Frederick Kempe. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2011. 579pp, $29.95. In 1946, Winston Churchill spoke of an “iron curtain” descending across the continent of Europe from Stettin to Trieste,...

Death of a Giant

A tribute to Russell KirkWith the death of Russell Kirk on April 29th at the age of 75, American conservatism has lost one of its true giants. Prior to the middle of the twentieth century, by far the most powerful conservative force in the United States was the...

Why the Union Soldiers Fought

The Union War by Gary W. Gallagher (Harvard University Press, 2011), 256 pages, $28. Nearly every Southerner was raised studying the Civil War, or, as some here call it, the War Between the States. By the time I entered the public school system in Marietta, Georgia,...

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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