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.

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.”

Ulyssean Interrogations at Dusk, or Slowing Down at 65

“Odysseus himself was offered immortality by the nymph Calypso—and refused it. He chose instead to return to his wife Penelope, a mortal woman who would age. He chose to return to a finite life marked by loss, memory, and longing; and in that choice, I have always thought, lies his greatest courage—and his deepest wisdom… I hope and I believe that I would have made the same Ulyssean decision.”

From the Man Who Loved America

“Angelo Codevilla advanced and argued for an anti-Wilsonian approach to both American foreign and American domestic policy.”

An Architect for all Purposes

An Architect for all Purposes

Ralph Adams Cram: An Architect’s Four Quests: Medieval, Modernist, American, Ecumenical by Douglass Shand-Tucci. University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst), 624 pp., $49.95 cloth, 2005Ralph Adams Cram was a man of such prodigious talents that even two volumes of...

Fromthe Nightstand of a Bookman . . .

University Bookman contributor Bruce Frohnen recommends the following biographies: Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson. With three volumes out and one more to come, this masterful dissection of the corruptions of power should be a warning to all fans of the...

The State of Biography

“You’ve got to be a bit ruthless, I think, to write a biography.” —Peter Cameron, The City of Your Final Destination “. . . be versatile, cunning, and ruthless in his pursuit—in other words, have all the attributes of a good spy.” —Erika Ostrovsky, Eye of Dawn: The...

The Lives of Others

The Lives of Others

“A common soldier, a child, a girl at the door of an inn, have changed the face of fortune, and almost of Nature.” These words of Edmund Burke, which Russell Kirk often invoked, bring home to us, in a set of striking images and historical allusions (the girl is Joan...

New Bookman

New Bookman

The new Spring issue of the University Bookman is out and the full contents are posted on our site. The issue is devoted to the art of biography with reviews of new books on Ralph Adams Cram (by Dan McCarthy), Orestes Brownson, conservative luminary Gerhart Niemeyer,...

Kirk Audio: Two Revolutions

We have posted a 50-minute audio lecture from 1990 with Dr. Kirk speaking on Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France and related themes.

Kirk Audio: Rights Under Two Revolutions

Russell Kirk speaks on the French and American Revolutions in this 1990 audio recording.Recorded June 1, 1990, “Rights under Two Revolutions” is an almost 50-minute discussion comparing the French Revolution and the American struggle for rights under English law that...

Open Court Backlist Find

Open Court Publishing has found a stock of three Kirk-related books that had been thought out of print. You can order books directly from them by calling 800-815-2280 (or +1-603-924-7209); they do not appear on their website. The books available are Kirk's essay...

Kirk and Buckley on Video

The Kirk Center is pleased to announce that will periodically be posting video clips from our archive on the web site. The first two videos are now available—a 1993 interview with Russell Kirk on the fortieth anniversary of The Conservative Mind, and a 1996 interview...

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.

Smithian Wisdom on Demand
@mungowitz on "Just Sentiments: 22 More Smithian Essays" Edited by Daniel B. Klein and @erikwmatson
CL Press/Fraser Institute

From the Man Who Loved America
Chuck Chalberg on "Fighting Enemies Foreign and Domestic: The Legacy of Angelo M. Codevilla," Edited by @RpwWilliams @EncounterBooks

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