The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Join friends of the Bookman in New York City on December 8, 2025 for the Gerald Russello Memorial Lecture.

Defending the Christian Faith

“In 100 Tough Questions For Catholics: Common Obstacles To Faith Today… David G. Bonagura, Jr. gives bite-sized answers to dozens of big questions about the faith.”

How to Love What is Permanent

“Throughout the book, Gibbs pleads with his readers that we not only think of the soul in terms of salvation but also in terms of health. Good taste won’t save one’s soul. But it will nourish the soul and incline the soul towards virtue much more than the bad taste we will acquire from mediocre things.”

Personalism in the Age of AI

“Personalism is a philosophical movement that places the human person at the center of inquiry, affirming the inherent dignity, value, and uniqueness of each individual. While it spans both religious and secular traditions, its common thread is a commitment to defending the irreducible reality of the person in an age increasingly shaped by systems, technologies, and abstractions.”

Christopher Dawson and Pluralism

“In particular, I want to examine three aspects of Dawson’s thought: his conclusion that cultures, especially Western culture, historically have been pluralist; his contention that a pluralism of cultures preserves a sphere of freedom from dominant modern ideologies that would eliminate that freedom; and finally, Dawson’s conviction that a pluralist world represents a new opportunity for evangelization.”

Taking Stock

Though you would not know it from the weather outside the Bookman’s headquarters, Spring has come, and with it the end of the first quarter of the new online University Bookman. The transition has been a success: our overall traffic has increased beyond even the...

Santayana’s Liberty

The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy and Character and Opinion in the United States by George Santayana, edited by James Seaton. Yale University Press, 2009. Paper, 240 pp. $16.This volume contains in full the two title works of George Santayana (1863–1952) as...

Modern Flaws and Lasting Norms

Modern Flaws and Lasting Norms

Enemies of the Permanent Things: Observations of Abnormity in Literature and Politics, by Russell Kirk. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1969 [Open Court 1999]. Russell Kirk remains consistently one of the most interesting American defenders of the conservative...

On What Knowledge Pertains To

On Essays and LettersIn tightly reasoned and intricate books, especially those of great writers, we find short segments that we do well to spell out as short essays of our own. A thing is never ours unless we state it, articulate it. The great Platonic teaching is...

The Dark Ages of the Enlightenment

The Brave New World of the Enlightenment by Louis I. Bredvold. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961. 164 pp. Fifteen years ago, Louis I. Bredvold noted that Carl Becker’s The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers needed badly to be rewritten....

Significance and Missteps

Adam Schwartz looks at a recent intellectual biography of G. K. Chesterton that breaks new ground in the field, but also makes some significant missteps in interpretation.

Wilhelm Roepke and the ‘Third Road’

The enormous span of Wilhelm Roepke’s interests and writings complicates the task of doing justice to his thought within the confines of an essay. Hence, I have elected to focus on just one aspect of his approach and of his philosophy, but one that has proved to be...

Democracy’s Immoderate Friends

A conversation with Daniel J. Mahoney.The University Bookman is pleased to present this interview with Daniel J. Mahoney, Professor of Political Science at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, and author of a recent book, The Conservative Foundations of the...

The Merging of Cultures

The Merging of Cultures

The West in Russia and China by Donald W. Treadgold. Volume 1, Russia 1472–1917, xxx + 324 pp. Volume 2, China 1582–1949, xxi + 251 pp. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973. This work is an extraordinary undertaking. One scholar working by himself traces the...

The Book Gallery

A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.

How to Love What is Permanent
Sarah Reardon on "Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity" by Joshua Gibbs.
@CirceInstitute

Personalism in the Age of AI Grant R. Martsolf on "Personalism for the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honor of David Walsh" Edited by Thomas W. Holman and Richard Avramenko.
@RLPublisher

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