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.

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.”

Shakespeare Forever

“…in his rich and thorough exploration of not only Shakespeare’s thoughts but also the course of Western thinking, David Womersley demonstrates that ideas do matter, and that Shakespeare is bigger than the harsh but ultimately timid emotions of our age.”

The Innocence of Imagination

“…the innocence that Blake’s poetry sings of is the awe, wonder, and imagination of a child who can conceive of boundless relationships with everything from a flower or butterfly to sister, brother, mother, and father. ‘Growing up,’ Vernon writes in addressing Blake’s poetic philosophy of innocence and imagination, ‘need not mean losing innocence and wonder.’ In fact, a mature innocence that can blend realism with imaginative creativity is key to a good and joyful life.”

“Putting Civil Back in Civilization”

“Putting Civil Back in Civilization”

“Hudson urgently reminds us that if we cannot live civilly with one another, we may have reached the limits of our democratic ‘proposition,’ as Lincoln called it. Hudson has rightfully re-introduced civility into our vocabulary and, in doing so, raises an inspirational ideal and draws a ‘line-in-the-sand’ by which to judge behavior.”

Here’s Why Not

Here’s Why Not

“Goligher sets this Christian view against the secular view now reigning in healthcare: that humans have extrinsic value. To treat humans as creatures with extrinsic value—meaning they have value only for what they can do, not for what they are—is to treat humans as things that produce value as opposed to persons who are valuable in and of themselves.”

Gentlemen Losers

Gentlemen Losers

“Yet I suspect that one reason Steely Dan’s star has risen in our own day is that they cannot be exclusively claimed by cultural progressives. Whatever the personal convictions of Fagen and Becker might have been, their songs capture a certain temperamental conservatism, equal parts cynicism towards the promise of a brighter tomorrow and yearning for a sense of social order long past, that feels right at home in our age of fractured shabbiness. Combine this sensibility with the band’s relentless pursuit of aesthetic perfection, and you have a recipe for music that greatly appeals to a certain segment of young fogeys more indebted to T.S. Eliot than to Charlie Kirk.”

Thinking Ourselves into Oblivion

Thinking Ourselves into Oblivion

“Without formal and final causes… we have no access to the universal intelligible structures and purposes in the world. And without those, there is no possibility of meaningful philosophy.”

Genesis Through a Glass Darkly

Genesis Through a Glass Darkly

“Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis is not a commentary or a work of scholarship but a series of essays on the human encounter with the divine as portrayed in this first and perhaps most influential of all books.”

Hope—Is It Warranted at This Point?

Hope—Is It Warranted at This Point?

“The past generation of American life, on Hunter’s account, has been one of intensifying ‘exhaustion’ and distrust, as the sources of pluralism have multiplied, and the endlessly ‘worked-through’ soil of the hybrid-Enlightenment has come to seem dry and depleted, no longer able to provide plausible accounts of human nature and the meaning of history that a majority of Americans can sign onto.”

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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