The University Bookman
Reviewing Books that Build Culture
A Celebration of Conservative Politics in France
Bibliographie générale des droites françaises edited by Alan de Benoist. Dualpha (France), Four volume set, 736 pp. cloth, 2005. Alain de Benoist, the main exponent of the French New Right, published this major work in 2004 and 2005, during a...
Parliamentary Men, Then and Now
William Pitt the Younger: A Biography by William Hague. Knopf (New York), 556 pp., $35.00 cloth, 2005. William Hague, one of the only leaders of Britain’s Conservative party in the twentieth century never to have become his nation’s Prime Minister, once...
The Art of Flannery O’Connor
Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South by Ralph C. Wood. William B. Eerdmans (Grand Rapids, Michigan) 265 pp., $22.00 cloth, 2004. The Incarnational Art of Flannery O’Connor by Christina Bieber Lake. Mercer University Press (Macon, Georgia) 243...
Kirk on Moral Imagination
The moral imagination is the principal possession that man does not share with the beasts. It is man’s power to perceive ethical truth, abiding law, in the seeming chaos of many events. Without the moral imagination, man would live merely day to day, or rather moment...
The Essence of Conservatism
A friend of mine, whom we shall call Miss Worth, fell into a conversation with a neighbor—Mrs. Williams, let us say—who, the day before, had sold a fine old building, long in her family, to be demolished that a lot for used-automobile sales might take its...
A Conservatism of Thought and Imagination
Ten Conservative Principles (1993) First, the conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. Second, the conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity. Third, conservatives believe in what may be called the principle of prescription....
Ten Conservative Principles
Ten Conservative Principles by Russell Kirk Being neither a religion nor an ideology, the body of opinion termed conservatism possesses no Holy Writ and no Das Kapital to provide dogmata. So far as it is possible to determine what conservatives believe, the first...
A Cautionary Note on the Ghostly Tale
Since most modern men have ceased to recognize their own souls, the spectral tale has been out of fashion, especially in America. As Cardinal Manning said, all differences of opinion are theological at bottom; and this fact has its bearing upon literary tastes....
Frights and Chills, Intelligently Rendered
Acquainted With the Night edited by Barbara Roden and Christopher Roden. Ash-Tree Press (British Columbia, Canada), 384 pp., $48.50 cloth; $26.00 paper, 2004. Ash-Tree Press specializes in classic supernatural fiction. From the village of Ashcroft in British Columbia,...
The Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.