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.”

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 Empire Goes Overboard

Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America by Benjamin L. Carp, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010, Cloth, 328 pp, $30 Boston had had enough. After a merchant ship refused to return to England with its controversial tea cargo, John...

Memo to Irving Babbitt

One of the most influential critics in the history of American letters receives (posthumously) a note from a [then-] associate professor of English at Michigan State University. Dear Professor Babbitt, I have, of course, no way of knowing where you are at the moment,...

Political Correctness and the War Against Authority

Society Against Itself: Political Correctness and Organizational Self-Destruction by Howard S. Schwartz, Karnac Books, 2010. Paper, 240 pp. The congeries of ideological positions known as “political correctness” has long posed a threat to Western civilization. As an...

Witness over Sixty Years

Witness by Whittaker Chambers (Random House, 1952) Visitors to Ronald Reagan’s Rancho del Cielo, just north of Santa Barbara, will discover that the late president’s large bookshelf, just inside the front door of the main house, is filled largely with books on Western...

Fall Newsletter

The latest number of the Russell Kirk Center newsletter (Fall 2011) has just been posted. It features a profile of the new complete Kirk Bibliography, compiled by our archivist, Charles C. Brown. It also includes an interview with Márcia Xavier de Brito, who is...

Celebrated Minor Contemporary American Poetry

The Best American Poetry 2011 Edited by Kevin Young with David Lehman Scribner (New York, NY), 2011, xxvi + 211 pp., $35.00 Consider the following—“Rally”—the first poem in this year’s annual Best American Poetry series, reproduced in its entirety: The awesome weight...

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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