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.”

Forgotten Name, Enduring Legacy

Founding Federalist: The Life of Oliver Ellsworth by Michael C. Toth (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2011). 240 pages, $25. When American schoolchildren study the Constitutional Convention, they typically learn a few names—Madison, Randolph, Patterson, Washington—and few...

Universities: American, European, Third World

The literature and documentation of our educational decline have grown enormously in the last quarter-century, but we have now reached the moment when we may see education in perspective. Perspective in this case means the retrospective and prospective glance—but also...

Peter J. Stanlis (1920–2011)

Peter Stanlis, who died on July 18, aged 91, was Distinguished Professor of Humanities, Emeritus, at Rockford College and a world authority on Edmund Burke and Robert Frost. His scholarship and sheer intellectual courage reconfigured Burke studies by expounding the...

Robert Nisbet and the Idea of Community

A “Best of the Bookman” essay from 1978 discusses Robert Nisbet’s understanding of community and in particular his reading of the great sociologists on the subject of the severe and even pathological isolation of the individual in modern society.

Peter Stanlis, RIP

Dr. Peter J. Stanlis has died. He was a great friend of Russell Kirk and the Kirk Center and a great scholar. We have posted a remembrance of him by Senior Fellow Ian Crowe in the University Bookman. In addition, we would like to call our readers’ attention to two...

Karl von Habsburg on Russell Kirk

Von Habsburg speaks on the influence of Russell Kirk in Europe. This video is from a 2000 celebration in Prague for the publication of The Conservative Mind in Czech.You can watch it on Vimeo. Running time: 08:10. Karl von Habsburg is the son of Otto von Habsburg....

Video on the Influence of Russell Kirk in Europe

Karl von Habsburg spoke at the announcement in Prague in 2000 of the Czech translation of Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind. The video of his remarks is available here. Karl is the son of Otto von Habsburg, who died in July (we posted a memorial article by Denis...

What was the Enlightenment?

A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy by Jonathan Israel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). Pages xiv, 276. “For what do we live,” Mr. Bennet asked his second daughter, having just read to her...

The Oracle of the South

The Essential Calhoun: Selections from Writings, Speeches, and Letters. Edited with an Introduction by Clyde Wilson. Foreword by Russell Kirk. Transaction Publishers (Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903), 436 pp., $32.95. The contemporary academic...

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.

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