The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Join friends of the Bookman in New York City on December 8, 2025 for the Gerald Russello Memorial Lecture.

Defending the Christian Faith

“In 100 Tough Questions For Catholics: Common Obstacles To Faith Today… David G. Bonagura, Jr. gives bite-sized answers to dozens of big questions about the faith.”

How to Love What is Permanent

“Throughout the book, Gibbs pleads with his readers that we not only think of the soul in terms of salvation but also in terms of health. Good taste won’t save one’s soul. But it will nourish the soul and incline the soul towards virtue much more than the bad taste we will acquire from mediocre things.”

Personalism in the Age of AI

“Personalism is a philosophical movement that places the human person at the center of inquiry, affirming the inherent dignity, value, and uniqueness of each individual. While it spans both religious and secular traditions, its common thread is a commitment to defending the irreducible reality of the person in an age increasingly shaped by systems, technologies, and abstractions.”

Christopher Dawson and Pluralism

“In particular, I want to examine three aspects of Dawson’s thought: his conclusion that cultures, especially Western culture, historically have been pluralist; his contention that a pluralism of cultures preserves a sphere of freedom from dominant modern ideologies that would eliminate that freedom; and finally, Dawson’s conviction that a pluralist world represents a new opportunity for evangelization.”

Burke and the Philosophy of Prescription

Conservatism, as a critically held system of ideas, is younger than equalitarianism and rationalism. For philosophical conservatism begins with Edmund Burke, who erected prescription and “prejudice”—by which he meant the supra-rational wisdom of the species—into a...

A Halloween Story

To help you celebrate Halloween, we are posting Russell Kirk's most famous—and award-winning—ghost story, "A Long Long Trail A Winding." Written and read by Kirk, the story made famous a real hobo who lived with the Kirksfor six years. The story begins with a...

New Solzhenitsyn Edition

The Kirk Center knows of few better friends or champions of the moral imagination in humane letters than Edward E. Ericson Jr., Emeritus Professor of English at Calvin College. A distinguished authority on the life and works of the Russian man of letters Aleksandr...

Review of the new edition of Kirk on Eliot

James Matthew Wilson reviews the new edition of Eliot and His Age by Russell Kirk for First Principles, the ISI web journal. Kirk considered this among his best books, and we are grateful for so sympathetic a review.

The Predicament of the Individual

An interview with James Poulos, editor of the Postmodern Conservative blog.The University Bookman is pleased to present this exclusive interview with James Poulos, doctoral candidate in political theory at Georgetown University and founding editor of the blog...

The Freedom to Use Common Sense

An interview with Philip K. Howard, author of Life without LawyersThe University Bookman is pleased to present this interview with Philip K. Howard, Vice-Chairman of the law firm of Covington & Burling LLP and Founder and Chair of Common Good, a non-profit...

Kirk in Time and Newsweek

Russell Kirk has been invoked recently in both Time and Newsweek—briefly in Joe Scarboroough's article on strategies for the Republican Party in Time,and more extensively in Jon Meacham's article, “A Modest Case for a Burkean Boomlet” in Newsweek.

Forgotten Founders

University Bookman editor Gerald J. Russello reviews biographies of Gouverneur Morris and Luther Martin, from the new ISI series on “forgotten founders” of the United States in an online exclusive.

Forgotten Constitutional Founders

An Incautious Man: The Life of Gouverneur Morris by Melanie Miller (ISI Books 2008, $25.00). Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet: The Life of Luther Martin by Bill Kauffman (ISI Books 2008, $25.00). Even after more than two centuries, the story of the Constitution...

The Book Gallery

A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.

How to Love What is Permanent
Sarah Reardon on "Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity" by Joshua Gibbs.
@CirceInstitute

Personalism in the Age of AI Grant R. Martsolf on "Personalism for the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honor of David Walsh" Edited by Thomas W. Holman and Richard Avramenko.
@RLPublisher

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