The University Bookman
Reviewing Books that Build Culture
Searching for a Usable Past
Of Time and Place: A Farm in Wisconsin by Richard Quinney. Ivan R. Dee (Chicago), 192 pp. $28.00 cloth, 2006. The American experience has always existed in tension with, if not outright hostility towards, the strictures of time and place. By the very nature of its...
Of the Soul and the Soil
Agrarianism and the Good Society by Eric T. Freyfogle. University Press of Kentucky (Lexington, Kentucky) 183 pp., $30.00 cloth, 2007. Wendell Berry: Life and Work edited by Jason Peters. University Press of Kentucky, 349 pp., $35.00 cloth, 2007. The Mother of All...
A Rare Specimen
The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis by Alan Jacobs. HarperSanFrancisco (San Francisco) xxvi + 432 pp., $25.95 cloth, $14.95 paper, 2005. J. R. R. Tolkien once told a future biographer of C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) that “You’ll never get to the bottom of...
Henry Brougham and the Building of a New Political Party
The Whig Revival, 1808–1830 by William Anthony Hay. Palgrave-Macmillan (New York and London) 256pp., $69.95 cloth, 2005. Educated at Sewanee and the University of Virginia, William Anthony Hay has been close terms with the disciples of Herbert Butterfield, once...
On Buildings, Boomers, and the ’Burbs
Interview with James Howard Kunstler James Kunstler is the author of The Geography of Nowhere, The Long Emergency, and other works exploring issues of architecture, resource depletion, and the need for human-scaled living. His strikingly irreverent blog may be found...
Doing Good by Doing Well
The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity by Gene Sperling. Simon & Schuster (New York), 368 pp., $26.95 cloth, 2005. The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth by Benjamin M. Friedman. Knopf (New York), 592 pp., cloth, 2005; Vintage (New...
The Chastened Planner
Understanding the Process of Economic Change by Douglass C. North. Princeton University Press (Princeton and Oxford), 187 pp., $10.00 cloth, 2005.Douglass C. North’s new book represents a watershed in the social engineering consciousness. North, who won the Nobel...
Tocqueville as Économiste
Alexis de Tocqueville: Textes économiques—Anthologie critique by J. L. Benoît and É. Keslassy. Pocket Agora (Paris) 478pp., EUR 15.00, 2005. Famed for his often prophetic insights into the future and widely regarded as one of the most astute commentators on French and...
Culture and Commerce
The Commercial Society: Foundations and Challenges in a Global Age by Samuel Gregg. Lexington Books (Lanham, Maryland), 190 pp. cloth, $75.00; paper, $18.00, 2007. This book is a valuable examination of the historical, social, cultural, and legal bases for commercial...
The Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.