The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Watch James Panero of the New Criterion discuss “The Urbanity of Russell Kirk” at the 2025 Gerald Russello Memorial Lecture.

The Urbanity of Russell Kirk

“The urban fabric must also be mended and darned through continuous upkeep. The city is not yours to experiment. From Russell to Russello, our ancestral spirits cast their shadows whether or not we choose to observe the city of god in the cities of men.”

After Ideology but Before the Revolution: The Liberal Soul

“Walsh could give voice to a devastating criticism of the critics of liberal democracy because they forgot the most important aspect of what they chopped to pieces: there can be no analysis of liberal democracy outside the convictions that underpin it, namely mutual respect for the dignity and rights of others. There is no higher purpose possible than the affirmation of the infinite worth of each human being, of each ‘person,’ and the political consequences of that affirmation: to build that insight into the regimes of self-government.”

Liberalism’s Death Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

“In this profound work, Walsh engages the friends and foes of liberalism alike to reveal its enduring appeal and resilience. Throughout he urges us to consider liberalism not so much as a stale academic doctrine, but as a lived experience rooted in the core belief of the inviolable dignity of each person as a free and rational being.”

The Paradox of Liberal Resilience

“The defense of inner liberty seems always to come as the long-awaited response and corrective to the modern state’s interventions…”

Renee Radell—She Paints Confusion in Search of Order

Renee Radell—She Paints Confusion in Search of Order

The following article appeared in the Sunday News Magazine (Detroit, Michigan) on February 24, 1974. If ever the poems of T. S. Eliot should be published in a splendid illustrated edition, Renee Radell ought to be the illustrator. For like Eliot, Mrs. Radell shows us...

Latin America’s Five Deadly Sins

Liberty for Latin America: How to Undo Five Hundred Years of State Oppression by Alvaro Vargas Llosa. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (New York) 276 pp., $25.00, 2005. As co-author of the 1997 classic The Manual for the Perfect Latin American Idiot, Peruvian journalist...

On Pilgrims and Park Rangers

The Right to Be Wrong: Ending the Culture War Over Religion in America by Kevin Seamus Hasson. Encounter Books (New York), 220 pp., $25.95 cloth, 2005. When the federal courts ordered Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore to remove his Ten Commandments monument from the...

Seeking God in Strange Places

The Truth is Out There: Christian Faith and the Classics of TV Science Fiction by Thomas Bertonneau and Kim Paffenroth. Brazos Press (Grand Rapids, Mich.), 272 pp., $18.99 paper, 2006. The idea of finding a Christian moral lesson in TV science fiction could occur only...

The Void in Daniel Bell’s Soul

A Retrospective Review of The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, Thirty Years Later Tthirty years and more after its appearance, Daniel Bell’s challenging book, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976), still merits the Times Literary Supplement’s...

Who Gets it Right? Liberals or Originalists?

The Myth of Judicial Activism: Making Sense of Supreme Court Decisions by Kermit Roosevelt III. Yale University Press (New Haven and London), 272 pp., $30.00 cloth, 2006. By the celebrated “switch in time that saved nine” in 1937, the United States Supreme Court,...

On Living in the Present

Michael Oakeshott on Religion, Aesthetics, and Politics by Elizabeth Campbell Corey. University of Missouri Press (Columbia, Missouri) xi + 253 pp., $39.95, cloth, 2006. Michael Oakeshott, Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin are arguably the three most important political...

Faith and Reason, Reconsidered

Christianity and the Soul of the University: Faith as a Foundation for Intellectual Community edited by Douglas Henry and Michael Beaty. Baker Academic (Grand Rapids, Michigan) 192 pp., $24.99 paper, 2006. Since the death of John Henry Newman in 1890, the justly...

Ideologues at the Podium

The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America by David Horowitz. Regnery Publishing, Inc (Washington, D.C.) 448 pp., $27.95 cloth, 2006. Prof. Ward Churchill’s ugly characterization of the 9/11 victims of the Twin Towers attack as “little Eichmans” who...

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.

"Delsol’s analysis stands out for the breadth of its perspective. Her essay covers topics as varied as corporatism, the French love for status and strikes, immigration, religion and secularism, populism and the role of intellectuals, Jacobinism, and the EU..."

Cracking the Code to Civilization
@CliffordBates12 on "The Code of Man: Love, Courage, Pride, Family, Country" (2nd Edition) by @waller_newell

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