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.”

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...

William Rusher, R.I.P.

As so many have pointed out, all his life, Bill Rusher provided energetic and steady leadership to the conservative movement. While much appreciated for his wit and wisdom, I was especially grateful for his invaluable support of my efforts to found the Russell Kirk...

Tyranny of the Herd

Bernard Iddings Bell’s Crowd Culture turned a withering eye on American conformity.

America’s Fin de Siècle: End of a Century or a Civilization?

The Culture We Deserve by Jacques Barzun. Edited by Arthur Krystal. Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 1989, 187 pp., $18. Politically America may have won the Cold War, but culturally she has entered the fin de siècle. Despair is chic among youth. Recently a...

Russello reviews

Gerald Russello reviews Freedom at Risk by James Buckley in the May 2011 issue of The American Conservative.

kirk character

The ... conservative is concerned, first of all, for the regeneration of spirit and character—with the perennial problem of the inner order of the soul, the restoration of the ethical understanding, and the religious sanction upon which any life worth living is...

Reinsch on Chambers

The Bookman is pleased to highlight an essay on the enduring relevance of Whittaker Chambers from Bookman friend and contributor Richard Reinsch. It is a concise summary of his book on Chambers, published recently by ISI.

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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