The University Bookman
Reviewing Books that Build Culture
The Farewell Address Revisited
As late as a century ago Washington’s Farewell Address would have ranked along with the Declaration and the Constitution as an intellectual source of periodic self-renewal for American patriots. It was still being memorized and declaimed in schools and referred to...
Recommended reading on economics
In Public Discourse, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute, Ryan Anderson has a two-part article on the flaws of modern economics (part one) (part two). We commend it to your attention. Anderson notes the lacunae in modern economic thought, which has little...
Poetry and the Common Language
If there is one principle which is nearly axiomatic among our contemporaries who regard themselves as poets and critics of poetry, it is that poetry should be written in the language of the everyday. This opinion can be traced back to Wordsworth’s famous assertion...
Christian Studies and the Liberal Arts College
This paper was delivered at the launching of the Christian Studies Institute program at Hillsdale College on November 8, 1980. What can a student today rightfully demand from a “liberal arts education”? A diploma that translates into a better-paid job? Such a...
Divine Faith, Human Faith
John Henry Newman: A View of Catholic Faith for the New Millennium by John R. Connolly. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005, pp. xviii+162. cloth $90; paper: $30.With this book, Connolly, a professor at Loyola Marymount, hopes to reach not only theologians and...
Newman’s ‘Idea’ and the Crisis of the Secular University
The secular university in the United States has reached a long-deferred moment of truth and ought to be ripe for the wisdom of John Henry Newman. Looking at the university today, its overextension, confusion about its purpose, catastrophic funding decline, and...
Resisting the Imperial Academy
The Critic as Conservator: Essays in Literature, Society, and Culture by George A. Panichas. Catholic University of America Press (Baltimore, MD) 1992, xii + 262 pp., $49.95.If you think that our intellectual culture is healthy, you do not want to read this book. It...
ISI Announces New President
Congratulations to Christopher Long, the new President and Chief Executive Officer of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Chris Long succeeds T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr., who has been named president emeritus. The Kirk Center warmly welcomes Chris and bids a very fond...
A Bold Music
The Great American Symphony: Music, the Depression, and War by Nicholas Tawa (Indiana University Press, 2009), 256 pages, $25.In The Great American Symphony: Music, the Depression, and War, Nicholas Tawa offers to his readership a much-needed study of an important but...
The Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.