The University Bookman
Reviewing Books that Build Culture
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Each week the Bookman brings you fresh reviews of the books that build culture, and essays that enliven the Permanent Things. Last year nearly 90,000 visitors engaged with the Bookman’s reviews, all free of charge and with no advertising to disrupt the reading experience. Our writers are touching hearts and minds across the globe with their reviews, bringing wisdom, creativity, and beauty to bear on the most important conversations happening in literature and culture.
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The University Bookman
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Campaign Progress
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 Greatest Fool That Ever Lived’
On Essays and Letters“It is easier to believe that one’s self is a fool than that Socrates was a fool; and yet, if he was not right, he must have been the greatest fool that ever lived.” —Robert Lynd, “On Not Being a Philosopher.” In book six of the Republic, the...
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.
