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.”

June Chesterton Centennial

The Kirk Center is pleased to join the G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture to co-sponsor a conference on the theme of “What’s Wrong With the World,” a centenary celebration of the publication of G. K. Chesterton’s book. The conference will be held in...

Intercollegiate Review on Kirk

To commemorate the 16th anniversary of the death of Russell Kirk on April 29, we would like to highlight the new archives of the Intercollegiate Review, particularly the 1994 commemorative issue on Russell Kirk, featuring essays from several noted writers and friends...

Books in Little

Authority Not Majority: The Life and Times of Friedrich Julius Stahl by Ruben Alvarado (Wordbridge Publishing, 134 pp.) Principles of Law by Friedrich Julius Stahl, ed. and trans. Ruben Alvarado (Wordbridge Publishing, 140 pp.) Alvarado’s two volumes make available...

The High Achievement of Christopher Dawson

A Historian and His Word: a Life of Christopher Dawson, 1889–1970 by Christina Scott. The Dynamic Character of Christian Culture: Essays on Dawsonian Themes edited by Peter J. Cataldo.“Years ago when I was an undergraduate your Ballad of the White Horse first brought...

Safer in Minnesota

On Essays and LettersSomehow, on my shelves, I have an apparently unread book called Letters from the Country. This book, written by Carol Bly, was published by Penguin in 1981. Carol Bly, as I found out, died in 2007, a well-known figure in Minnesota literary...

Pianarchy

After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance by Kenneth Hamilton. Oxford University Press (New York) 304 pp, $29.95, 2008What if all classical recordings were destroyed tomorrow? Forget the obvious fact that such mass destruction could never be...

Dignity and the Law

In the Shadow of the Law by Kermit Roosevelt Straus & Giroux (New York) 384 pp, $24.00, 2005 Steadily emerging over the past two decades is an impressive collection of numerous books, essays, and academic writings making highly critical pronouncements of the...

The Right’s Exit

Conservatism in America: Making Sense of the American Right by Paul Gottfried. Palgrave Macmillan (New York) 189 pp, $48.00, 2007 The 2008 elections raised important questions about the prospects for conservatism in the United States. Many conservatives express...

The Story of Carlton Hayes

Carlton Hayes, synonymous with European history to generations of twentieth-century American undergraduates, has been largely neglected since his death in 1964. He was a trailblazer, choosing to study what was then the unfashionable field of European history, and...

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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