The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Watch James Panero of the New Criterion discuss “The Urbanity of Russell Kirk” at the 2025 Gerald Russello Memorial Lecture.

The Urbanity of Russell Kirk

“The urban fabric must also be mended and darned through continuous upkeep. The city is not yours to experiment. From Russell to Russello, our ancestral spirits cast their shadows whether or not we choose to observe the city of god in the cities of men.”

Marxism and the Rising Generation

“Gonzalez and Gorka have performed an important service in bringing together a wide range of fact and theory and in establishing a coherent line stretching directly from Marx through many important figures to the present day.”

Cracking the Code to Civilization

“In a world flooded with online influencers, ‘red pill’ rhetoric, and algorithmic posturing, Newell offers something older, wiser, and far superior: a code of manliness rooted in the Western tradition of virtue, character, and service. His message is that true manliness is not a pose or performance; it is the integration of moral and intellectual excellence, what he calls ‘the manly heart.’”

France and the Problem of Abstraction

“…French people’s love for ideas, indeed for ideology, often puts them at odds with the pragmatic requisites of a mature democracy and with reality itself. France is, as she very aptly puts it, ‘a country of dreamers who fall into melancholy when reality catches up with them.’ But far from being merely a psychological explanation for French unhappiness, this idealism is the key to a political understanding of our complicated relationship with the very principle of democracy.”

First Principles: Remedy for a Nation at Risk

This April occurs the tenth anniversary of the now historic educational report A Nation at Risk. A flurry of activity from educators, editors, and legislators came as a result of that document, which stated “The ideal of academic excellence as the primary goal of...

rak variety

A “conservative character [is] suspicious of doctrinaire alteration, respectful toward history, preferring variety over uniformity, acknowledging a moral order composed of human persons, not of mere political and economic atoms subservient to the state.”

Updated Kirk Bibliography

A second edition of our archivist Charles C. Brown's Russell Kirk: A Bibliography has been released by ISI Books, fully revised and updated. There is a kind review by James Heiser at The New American.

Russell Kirk on C-SPAN

We recently updated our video links with listings from two talks from Russell Kirk, including The Conservative Movement, Then & Now, a talk given for the Heritage Foundation in 1980.

Hiatus

Have you caught up on the recent articles from Gerald Russello? Debating the Constitution in City Journal, and Faith from the Hearth and Public Schools: Faith-Free Zones in the National Catholic Register.

Bottom Rail on Top

Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter’s Son by William Alexander Percy (Alfred A. Knopf, 1941), 348 pp. Lanterns on the Levee, William Alexander Percy’s eloquent autobiography, has been a minor classic since its initial publication in 1941. It was written...

A few links we recommend

• The New Atlantis has a great symposium on Place and Placelessness in America with several essays that are well worth your time. • The Imaginative Conservative has a three-part series by John Willson on the historian Carlton Hayes (whom we covered in this 2010...

Directions Back to the Public Square

Directions Back to the Public Square

Exiting a Dead End Road: A GPS for Christians in Public Discourse edited by Gudrun and Martin Kugler (Vienna, Austria: Kairos Publishing, 2010), paper, 353 pp. (introduction and table of contents available here).Europe is in decline. Once the cradle of Western...

In Praise of Latin

We never forget our Latin teacher, it has often been said. How true it is for others of my generation, I cannot say, but I most assuredly remember mine. In our small high school, situated in the remote Adirondack mountain fastness of northern New York, we had an...

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.

"Delsol’s analysis stands out for the breadth of its perspective. Her essay covers topics as varied as corporatism, the French love for status and strikes, immigration, religion and secularism, populism and the role of intellectuals, Jacobinism, and the EU..."

Cracking the Code to Civilization
@CliffordBates12 on "The Code of Man: Love, Courage, Pride, Family, Country" (2nd Edition) by @waller_newell

Load More

Shop through Regnery
Support the Kirk Center
& University Bookman