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.

Would you consider a gift to help us continue this work?

If just 1 in 4 of our readers contributed $10, we’d dramatically increase our capacity to recruit the brightest young writers and tackle more books and topics, all with a Kirkian angle. We’ve set a goal of raising $20k this month in order to continue our mission. Exceeding this amount will allow us to expand our work even more.

If you love the Bookman, and read us with regularity, we’d greatly appreciate your generous support this month.

With gratitude,

Luke Sheahan, Ph.D., editor
The University Bookman

P.S. As a special thank you to all Bookman supporters this month, we’ll send you a link to an audio recording of Ex Tenebris, one of Kirk’s best ghostly short stories. We think you’ll really enjoy it.

Campaign Progress

John Adams: Russell Kirk’s Founding Federalist

“…[Kirk] located the mainstream of the American Founding not with the Jeffersonian Republicans, but with their rivals in the Federalist party. Kirk admired them not only as practical statesmen, but also as anti-revolutionary thinkers in their own right. As he put it, the Constitution they supported was both ‘the most successful conservative device in the history of the world’ and a ‘great monument’ to the Federalists.”

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.

The Brothers Stuart and the Rise of Protestant England

“…Belloc remains a draught of fresh air and a happy antidote to the official version of English national history, with its idealized tale of public-spirited reforms and liberal advances broadening down to the happy present.”

The Fog of the American War for Independence

“Academic and popular history of the period has long noted the early intimidation and violence that accompanied the rise of an American political consciousness and revolutionary movement.”

“To Think Faith” as Educators

“…faith and pedagogy should be in harmony. Smith’s guide is not a theory of faith and teaching or how to sprinkle faith within teaching. ‘It offers repeated practice at noticing and thinking through ways in which faith and the process of teaching might connect in everyday practice,’ in the mundane moments of elementary, secondary, or higher education classrooms.”

A Literary Patrimony

In this article from the Bookman’s 1994 Memorial issue, Russell Kirk’s daughter Cecilia discusses the literary heritage that she was given by Kirk’s regular evening readings.

Fortunate Friendships

In this excerpt from his new memoir, The Man in the Middle, Tim Goeglein discusses the profound influence on his life of the thought and friendship of Russell Kirk.

Santayana’s Standing

A response to David Dilworth.David Dilworth’s review in the Spring 2011 University Bookman of George Santayana’s The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy and Character and Opinion in the United States (Yale UP, 2009) raises important questions about the permanent...

The Youthful Writings of Russell Kirk

The scribblings of Russell Kirk, as teenager and pre-teen, reveal a widely read, precocious and imaginative young man. Among the remnants of youth which are preserved one may find vastly detailed drawings of Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and all sorts of adventure...

An Everlasting Man of Letters

G. K. Chesterton: A Biography by Ian Ker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), xiv + 747 pp., $65.00 cloth Among the genres in which G. K. Chesterton wrote was critical biography. With typical paradox, Chesterton defined two duties for such authors that seem...

Mr. Conservative

Dr. Russell Kirk is to American conservatism what Edmund Burke was to British conservatism. My equation is a product of the catalyst of history. Before Burke stood up to the savagery and barbarism of the French Revolution, not one man in all Europe raised so...

Ghostly Kirk

In time for Halloween, "Ghostly Kirk," a site that tracks the ghostly tales of Russell Kirk, is now on the web, courtesy of Jeff Pearce.

Revisionist History at Its Best

Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Frederick Kempe. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2011. 579pp, $29.95. In 1946, Winston Churchill spoke of an “iron curtain” descending across the continent of Europe from Stettin to Trieste,...

Death of a Giant

A tribute to Russell KirkWith the death of Russell Kirk on April 29th at the age of 75, American conservatism has lost one of its true giants. Prior to the middle of the twentieth century, by far the most powerful conservative force in the United States was 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.

Kirk saw poetry, fiction, tradition, and restraint as essential to understanding America and preserving its character. In his review of "On America," @cjscalia explores Kirk’s vision of the founding, statesmanship, literature, and the enduring ideas that have shaped the republic.

The Audacious Russell Kirk
Bruce P. Frohnen reviews "On America: How to Understand the Legacy of 1776" by Russell Kirk. Edited by Michael Lucchese.

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