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.

Poetry of Transcendence

“A related, and most welcome, theme in Killing Orpheus is memento mori, a reminder of the inevitability of death. Our lives have become so long, easy, and comfortable that death has become something of an inconvenient truth, which many prefer to ignore or forget. McClatchey is not one of them, thankfully: the collection abounds with reminders of our mortality.”

The Consensus Reality

“In his study of an underlying consensus regarding education, race, and gender, Jonathan Butcher has performed a valuable service for those who wish to understand the true nature of the so-called division within American society today.”

Britain at the Turning Point

“A major theme that runs through Allport’s study is the shifting equilibrium of power relations between the United States and Britain. The war demonstrated that, as British power and resources dwindled, Britain became dependent on material and financial supplies from the United States.”

A Call to Timelessness

A Call to Timelessness

The Letters of Wyndham Lewis, edited by W. K. Rose. New York: New Directions, 1964. 580 pp.In the words of his lifelong friend T. S. Eliot, Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) was “the most fascinating personality of our time.” For not only was Lewis an extraordinarily...

It’s About the Music

Exploring U2: Is This Rock ’n’ Roll? by Scott Calhoun (ed.), Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2012, 276 pp., hardcover, $60. Music is better heard than described. So the Scott Calhoun-edited Exploring U2: Is This Rock ’n’ Roll? naturally suffers from handicaps in a way...

The Third Road

Economics of the Free Society, by Wilhelm Roepke. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1963. 261 pp. In this generally wise and always humane study, Professor Roepke unconsciously illustrates the loss of political clarity which came when our socialists captured the term...

Textbooks and the Audience for Poetry

My grandfather learned his rhetoric in a nineties two-horse town in north-central Ohio. His high school book (which I have inherited) was one of the popular ones of the day—Virginia Waddy’s Elements of Composition and Rhetoric. Like most rhetorics of its time, and...

kirk wise species

The conservative believes that the individual is foolish, although the species is wise; therefore, unlike the confident intellectual, he declines to undertake the reconstruction of society and human nature.

On the Matter of Authentic Conservatism and Political Faith

From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism. By D. G. Hart. Eerdmans, 2011. 237 pages. $25. With this book and his earlier A Secular Faith, Daryl Hart has put his force of persuasion strongly behind the idea of a secular...

Oakeshott and Conservatism

Rationalism in Politics and Other Essaysby Michael Oakeshott. New York: Basic Books, 1962. 333 pp. [rev ed. Liberty Fund, 1991] It is a pleasure to have Professor Oakeshott on my side, even though there are moments when I have trouble in understanding just where his...

Contingent Conservatism

The New Politics: Liberal Conservatism or Same Old Tories? by Peter King, Policy Press (Bristol UK), 2011, 156pp, paper, $35. Peter King of De Montfort University is a Conservative-supporting academic who has advised the government on welfare reform. He is besides the...

A New ‘Rasselas’

The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, by Samuel Johnson. Edited by Warren Fleischauer. New York: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc., 1962. 189 pp. [Edition reviewed; Penguin edition (Kindle); Free edition (Kindle)] Warren Fleischauer’s edition of Rasselas...

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.

The Consensus Reality
Jeffrey Folks on "The Polarization Myth: America’s Surprising Consensus on Race, Schools, and Sex" by @JM_Butcher. @EncounterBooks

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