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.

The Long Decline of Liberalism

“Pilkington describes the many societal ills that this destruction of hierarchies entailed… While Pilkington’s diagnosis of liberalism as the source of these diseases seems sound, his confidence that global liberalism is collapsing rapidly and that the immediate future will be ‘post-liberal’ leaves me uneasy. Even if we grant that liberalism is an inherently unstable way of organizing a polity, does that really allow us to predict just how rapidly that instability will lead to a downfall?”

The British Empire on Trial

“[Biggar’s] book amounts to a defense of the British Empire. He succeeds at giving the reader ample reasons not to hate his home country, but also misses an opportunity to use his unique training to pioneer a more innovative form of history.”

A Heroic Little Sparrow Shines Brightly in the Dark World of Children’s Literature

“The story is as delightful and charming as it sounds, recounting the odyssey of a virtuous sparrow named Passer who must move his family to a new home after ‘big yellow machines’ appear at his home.”

JP O’Malley Interviews Author Maurice Samuels

JP O’Malley Interviews Author Maurice Samuels

“‘Dreyfus’s Jewishness played a major role’ in convincing many within the army hierarchy to believe he was a traitor and a spy, Samuels stresses… This, in essence, is the main thesis put forward in [the book]. ‘Clearly, you cannot write about this case without mentioning the fact that Dreyfus was Jewish, or bringing up the role of antisemitism,’ the historian points out.”

The Left Wing Patriot

The Left Wing Patriot

“A man of the left and an American patriot, [Peretz] is a rare bird today—and, therefore, possibly even a controversial one, not to mention an iconoclastic one.” 

Will You Also Go Away?

Will You Also Go Away?

“The suggestions that these True Confessions pose for renewal are aligned, whether they come from bishops or laypeople: we must recover the view that the Church is not an institution but a community founded on encountering Jesus Christ and living radically for him.”

Sailing East

Sailing East

“As we push deeper into the third decade of the twenty-first century, the sense of boredom and anxiety of the early twenty-first century only seems to increase. What is needed is a renewed sense of adventure, confidence, and patriotism—the same sense of adventure, confidence, and patriotism that propelled the East India Company to create the wealth and wonder of the modern world.”

The Republic and the American Right

The Republic and the American Right

“…Kevin Slack traces our continuing national horror back to its roots, America’s roots, in his scathing new book… Slack dedicates his screed to patriotic Americans ‘disgusted by our rotting plutocracy…'”

Evil and Good in Cormac McCarthy

Evil and Good in Cormac McCarthy

“Vereen M. Bell’s primary contention is that McCarthy presents us with a dead end—confronting us, in a kind of stoical existentialism, with the universality of death and non-being.”

TIME Marches On… Past 100 

TIME Marches On… Past 100 

“As TIME ‘goes on,’ therefore, and we commemorate its achievements, the career  of Henry Robinson Luce, the ‘Man of TIME’s Century,’ deserves recognition.”

The Missing Virtue

The Missing Virtue

“In [the book], the virtue of humility is presented as the antithesis of, and thus an antidote to, the narcissism that can adversely affect interpersonal dynamics…”

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.

The Long Decline of Liberalism
Gene Callahan on "The Collapse of Global Liberalism: And the Emergence of the Post Liberal World Order" by
@philippilk. Polity Press.

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