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.

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Joseph Story and the Politics of the Early Republic

“the central theme of Clarke’s study is the extent to which the case for the federal common law rests on a thoroughly nationalist understanding of the American founding and union. At a basic level, a common law requires a common people. But even more importantly, Story needed a narrative of consolidated American nationhood to fill the yawning gap in his theory—that there was never any direct, national adoption of the common law.”

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Listening to the Law, and Now Speaking It

“Justice Barrett thus roots an originalist mode of judging in history and tradition. Judging rightly is an inherently conservative endeavor: the judiciary’s very claim to review the work of the political branches draws each political act back to past writing, either in the Constitution or the United States Code. Keeping our politics within the scope of ordered liberty—and most importantly a written text—makes the judiciary the branch that preserves and tempers us in the face of the revolutionary instinct to throw off the so-called ‘dead hand of the past.’” 

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One Man’s Journey to Faith

“Regardless of one’s beliefs, Charles Murray’s [book] must be acknowledged as a notable work. It is a heartfelt account of one man’s (actually, one couple’s) acceptance of religious faith and of Christianity in particular, and while not a work of scholarship, it is informed by extensive reading and decades of thought. Like the work of C.S. Lewis, which inspired Murray’s turn toward Christianity, it is written in an admirably direct and accessible style.”

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Latin America’s Five Deadly Sins

by | Sep 9, 2007

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

by | Sep 9, 2007

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

by | Sep 9, 2007

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

by | Sep 9, 2007

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?

by | Sep 9, 2007

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

by | Sep 9, 2007

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

by | Sep 9, 2007

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

by | Sep 9, 2007

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...

A Storm-Tossed Nation

by | Sep 9, 2007

Pakistan: Eye of the Storm by Owen Bennett Jones. Yale University Press (New Haven, Connecticut), xxx + 328 pp., second edition, $17.00/£10.99 paper, 2003. (This is the second essay of a two-part review, the first half of which appeared in the Winter 2007 issue.)...

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.

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ubookman The University Bookman @ubookman ·
25 May

Joseph Story and the Politics of the Early Republic
John Grove on "Contending for American Nationhood: Joseph Story and the Debate Over a Federal Common Law" by Benjamin Clark. @BloomsburyPub @Liberty_Fund

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25 May

Listening to the Law, and Now Speaking It
James V. F. Dickey on "Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution" by Amy Coney Barrett. @slf_liberty @SCOTUSblog

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