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.

To Find Eyes to See

“Hren selects earnest classics that have stood the test of time—books that generations of readers have found edifying and moving. But also, in the introduction and conclusion alike, Hren returns to another key point of fiction: it doesn’t just help us see extraordinary truth, although it can. More important is that fiction gives us eyes to see the transcendence of ordinary lives, including our own.”

Rural America as It Really Is

“Harold Bell Wright, regardless of how literary tastemakers viewed him in the 1920s, is the central figure in the origin of Branson. Though denigrated by the Baldwins and H. L. Menckens of his day, Wright was one of the century’s best-selling novelists.”

The Poet Watches Birds

“Jennifer A. Hartenburg’s debut collection of poems… offers such a poetic practice of waking, attending, and caring. These are poems rich with the life of the world, flocking with birds and bees both literal and metaphorical, but also closely attentive to the quiddities of language and the motions of the soul.”

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...

Peter Stanlis, RIP

Peter Stanlis was a great friend to the Bookman and author of the Burke revival. May he rest in peace.

Duggan book

We congratulate Joseph Duggan on the release of his e-book Give Paz a Chance and the impending publication of The Zuckerberg Galaxy: A Primer for Negotiating the Media Maelstrom, portions of which first appeared in the University Bookman.

What’s the Supreme Court Supposed to Do?

The Supreme Court and the American Elite, 1789–2008 by Lucas A Powe, Jr. Harvard University Press (Cambridge and London), 432 pages, paper $19.95, 2011. Sometime in 2012 the United States Supreme Court will issue its most important opinion in the twenty-first century...

More on Otto von Habsburg

Bookman associate editor David Bonagura has written a piece for The Catholic Thing, “Otto von Habsburg: Monarch, Freedom Fighter, Catholic,” as the late Archduke was laid to rest with his ancestors.

Pressing On

This summer saw the passing of Otto von Habsburg, a living embodiment—perhaps the last such—of the European order swept away by the Great War. We have included a fitting tribute to the Archduke—whose son, Karl, studied with Russell Kirk as a Wilbur Fellow—by Denis...

Otto von Habsburg (20 November 1912–4 July 2011)

Otto von Habsburg (20 November 1912–4 July 2011)

“Because we have the truth,” replied Otto von Habsburg when I asked him why he was convinced that Europe would return to the Christian faith. In light of the ongoing political secularization and the influx of non-Christian immigration in Europe, I, a Catholic and...

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.

To Find Eyes to See
@NadyaWilliams81 on "More Than a Matter of Taste: The Moral Imagination and the Spirit of Literature" by Joshua Hren. @WordOnFire Luminor

Rural America as It Really Is
Jason C. Phillips on "Faith, Family, and Flag: Branson Entertainment and the Idea of America" by Joanna Dee Das. @UChicagoPress

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