The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Join Kirktober and help support the mission of the University Bookman

 

Each week the Bookman brings you fresh reviews of the books that build culture, and essays that enliven the Permanent Things. Last year nearly 90,000 visitors engaged with the Bookman’s reviews, all free of charge and with no advertising to disrupt the reading experience. Our writers are touching hearts and minds across the globe with their reviews, bringing wisdom, creativity, and beauty to bear on the most important conversations happening in literature and culture.

Would you consider a gift to help us continue this work?

If just 1 in 4 of our readers contributed $10, we’d dramatically increase our capacity to recruit the brightest young writers and tackle more books and topics, all with a Kirkian angle. We’ve set a goal of raising $20k this month in order to continue our mission. Exceeding this amount will allow us to expand our work even more.

If you love the Bookman, and read us with regularity, we’d greatly appreciate your generous support this month.

With gratitude,

Luke Sheahan, Ph.D., editor
The University Bookman

P.S. As a special thank you to all Bookman supporters this month, we’ll send you a link to an audio recording of Ex Tenebris, one of Kirk’s best ghostly short stories. We think you’ll really enjoy it.

Campaign Progress

John Adams: Russell Kirk’s Founding Federalist

“…[Kirk] located the mainstream of the American Founding not with the Jeffersonian Republicans, but with their rivals in the Federalist party. Kirk admired them not only as practical statesmen, but also as anti-revolutionary thinkers in their own right. As he put it, the Constitution they supported was both ‘the most successful conservative device in the history of the world’ and a ‘great monument’ to the Federalists.”

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.

The Brothers Stuart and the Rise of Protestant England

“…Belloc remains a draught of fresh air and a happy antidote to the official version of English national history, with its idealized tale of public-spirited reforms and liberal advances broadening down to the happy present.”

The Fog of the American War for Independence

“Academic and popular history of the period has long noted the early intimidation and violence that accompanied the rise of an American political consciousness and revolutionary movement.”

“To Think Faith” as Educators

“…faith and pedagogy should be in harmony. Smith’s guide is not a theory of faith and teaching or how to sprinkle faith within teaching. ‘It offers repeated practice at noticing and thinking through ways in which faith and the process of teaching might connect in everyday practice,’ in the mundane moments of elementary, secondary, or higher education classrooms.”

The End of America as We Know It?

Immigration and the American Future by Chilton Williamson, Jr. Chronicles Press 307 pp., 2007Chilton Williamson, Jr., former book review editor at National Review and the current senior editor for books at Chronicles, has compiled an invaluable set of essays in...

To Renew and Rebuild Civilization

Restoring the Meaning of Conservatism: Writings from Modern Age by George A. Panichas. ISI Books (Wilmington, Del.) 350 pp., $18.00 paper, 2008 A nationally known conservative figure recently remarked in the presence of this writer, “The American conservative movement...

The First Thing We Do . . .

Unrestrained: Judicial Excess and the Mind of the American Lawyer by Robert F. Nagel. Transaction Publishers (New Brunswick, N.J.) 148 pp., $39.95 cloth, 2008   Robert F. Nagel, the Ira C. Rothgerber, Jr. Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of...

A Study of Two Masters of English Prose

The Same Man: George Orwell & Evelyn Waugh in Love and War by David Lebedoff. Random House (New York) 264 pp., 2008 Reviewed by John P. Rossi Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell were two of the twentieth century’s greatest masters of English prose: Waugh in his comic...

The Lesser of Evils: Democratic Capitalism Reconsidered

Democratic Capitalism and Its Discontents by Brian C. Anderson. ISI Books (Wilmington, Del.) 225 pp., $25.00 paper, 2007Few things are more irritating, wrote Lord Acton, than those which expose the pedigree of ideas. Brian Anderson’s Democratic Capitalism and Its...

A New Era for the Bookman

We apologize for the lack of the Bookman these past months, and we deeply regret any inconvenience our absence has caused. Fundraising and operational difficulties have prevented us from maintaining our usual production schedule, which the financial crisis only...

First Principles of Leadership Lecture

Annette Kirk spoke on March 3 on "First Principles of Leadership" for the Leadership Academy of the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids. You can see photos and view the lecture here on their site. The assigned...

Kirk Center in Italy

Senior Fellow Marco Respinti announces progress on the web site for the Centro Studi Russell Kirk based in Milan, Italy. It is still under development, but you can visit at www.russellkirk.eu. We have also recently posted an updated bio for Marco.

Permanent Things Newsletter

We are pleased to announce a new number of Permanent Things, the newsletter of the Russell Kirk Center, edited by Ben Lockerd. The Fall 2009 edition features a report on 2009 activities at the Center. You may download it at this link (PDF, 2.6MB).

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.

Kirk saw poetry, fiction, tradition, and restraint as essential to understanding America and preserving its character. In his review of "On America," @cjscalia explores Kirk’s vision of the founding, statesmanship, literature, and the enduring ideas that have shaped the republic.

The Audacious Russell Kirk
Bruce P. Frohnen reviews "On America: How to Understand the Legacy of 1776" by Russell Kirk. Edited by Michael Lucchese.

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