The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Watch James Panero of the New Criterion discuss “The Urbanity of Russell Kirk” at the 2025 Gerald Russello Memorial Lecture.

The Urbanity of Russell Kirk

“The urban fabric must also be mended and darned through continuous upkeep. The city is not yours to experiment. From Russell to Russello, our ancestral spirits cast their shadows whether or not we choose to observe the city of god in the cities of men.”

After Ideology but Before the Revolution: The Liberal Soul

“Walsh could give voice to a devastating criticism of the critics of liberal democracy because they forgot the most important aspect of what they chopped to pieces: there can be no analysis of liberal democracy outside the convictions that underpin it, namely mutual respect for the dignity and rights of others. There is no higher purpose possible than the affirmation of the infinite worth of each human being, of each ‘person,’ and the political consequences of that affirmation: to build that insight into the regimes of self-government.”

Liberalism’s Death Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

“In this profound work, Walsh engages the friends and foes of liberalism alike to reveal its enduring appeal and resilience. Throughout he urges us to consider liberalism not so much as a stale academic doctrine, but as a lived experience rooted in the core belief of the inviolable dignity of each person as a free and rational being.”

The Paradox of Liberal Resilience

“The defense of inner liberty seems always to come as the long-awaited response and corrective to the modern state’s interventions…”

The Long Twilight

On Essays and Letters“If we say that human civilization has existed for about a millionth of the age of this Galaxy, we may not be far wrong.” —Arthur C. Clarke, 1963. On every side, we are besieged with theories telling us that, due to man, we are depriving future...

Conservatism in Germany

In Remembrance of Caspar von Schrenck-Notzing (1927–2009)The year 1968 not only marked the culmination of the students’ rebellion, but also the starting point for a conservative counter movement in Germany. Three developments were caused by this event: In 1970 Caspar...

Magister

Last Rites by John Lukacs, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT) $25.00 hardcover, 2009 It is now twenty years since John Lukacs made his Confessions of an Original Sinner. Has time rolled ’round so soon for his Last Rites? That is the title of his second...

Looking Over Their Shoulder: Orwell and the Intellectuals

Every Intellectual’s Big Brother: George Orwell's Literary Siblings by John Rodden, University of Texas Press (Austin, Texas) 263 pp, $45.00, 2006   The title of Every Intellectual’s Big Brother seems to suggest that there is something malign about the influence...

Mystery Bathed in Light

The Mind that Is Catholic. Philosophical and Political Essays, by James V. Schall, S.J. Catholic University of America Press (Washington, DC) 337 pp, $34.95, 2008 . . . but nobody thought the whole commonwealth fell with the king, or that he alone had ultimate...

Reading Peter Viereck Anew

Shame and Glory of the Intellectuals by Peter Viereck (Reprint Edition with an earlier preface by the author) Transaction Publishers (New Brunswick, N.J.) 330 pp., $34.95 paper, 2007 Unadjusted Man in an Age of Overadjustment by Peter Viereck (Reprint Edition with a...

New World Man

Champlain’s Dream by David Hackett Fischer, New York: Simon and Schuster,848 pp., $40.00, 2009In the 1830s Black Hawk, chief of the Sac and Fox nations, recalled one of his people’s earliest memories. Many years before, his ancestor in the St. Lawrence Valley had a...

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.

After Ideology but Before the Revolution: The Liberal Soul
Barry Cooper on The Growth of the Liberal Soul (2nd Edition) by David Walsh. @undpress

Liberalism’s Death Has Been Greatly Exaggerated
Joseph R. Fornieri on The Growth of the Liberal Soul (2nd Edition) by David Walsh. @undpress

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