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.”

Recommended reading on economics

In Public Discourse, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute, Ryan Anderson has a two-part article on the flaws of modern economics (part one) (part two). We commend it to your attention. Anderson notes the lacunae in modern economic thought, which has little...

Poetry and the Common Language

If there is one principle which is nearly axiomatic among our contemporaries who regard themselves as poets and critics of poetry, it is that poetry should be written in the language of the everyday. This opinion can be traced back to Wordsworth’s famous assertion...

Christian Studies and the Liberal Arts College

This paper was delivered at the launching of the Christian Studies Institute program at Hillsdale College on November 8, 1980. What can a student today rightfully demand from a “liberal arts education”? A diploma that translates into a better-paid job? Such a...

Divine Faith, Human Faith

John Henry Newman: A View of Catholic Faith for the New Millennium by John R. Connolly. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005, pp. xviii+162. cloth $90; paper: $30.With this book, Connolly, a professor at Loyola Marymount, hopes to reach not only theologians and...

Newman’s ‘Idea’ and the Crisis of the Secular University

The secular university in the United States has reached a long-deferred moment of truth and ought to be ripe for the wisdom of John Henry Newman. Looking at the university today, its overextension, confusion about its purpose, catastrophic funding decline, and...

Resisting the Imperial Academy

The Critic as Conservator: Essays in Literature, Society, and Culture by George A. Panichas. Catholic University of America Press (Baltimore, MD) 1992, xii + 262 pp., $49.95.If you think that our intellectual culture is healthy, you do not want to read this book. It...

ISI Announces New President

Congratulations to Christopher Long, the new President and Chief Executive Officer of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Chris Long succeeds T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr., who has been named president emeritus. The Kirk Center warmly welcomes Chris and bids a very fond...

A Bold Music

The Great American Symphony: Music, the Depression, and War by Nicholas Tawa (Indiana University Press, 2009), 256 pages, $25.In The Great American Symphony: Music, the Depression, and War, Nicholas Tawa offers to his readership a much-needed study of an important but...

Discerning of Spirits

Discerning of Spirits

Furnace of Doubt: Dostoevsky and ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ by Arther Trace. Sherwood Sugden and Company, 1988; Open Court 1999, 178 pp. $6.95 paper. The religious essences of F. M. Dostoevsky’s vision defy full and final evaluation, for there is always something new to...

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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