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.

To Find Eyes to See

“Hren selects earnest classics that have stood the test of time—books that generations of readers have found edifying and moving. But also, in the introduction and conclusion alike, Hren returns to another key point of fiction: it doesn’t just help us see extraordinary truth, although it can. More important is that fiction gives us eyes to see the transcendence of ordinary lives, including our own.”

Rural America as It Really Is

“Harold Bell Wright, regardless of how literary tastemakers viewed him in the 1920s, is the central figure in the origin of Branson. Though denigrated by the Baldwins and H. L. Menckens of his day, Wright was one of the century’s best-selling novelists.”

The Poet Watches Birds

“Jennifer A. Hartenburg’s debut collection of poems… offers such a poetic practice of waking, attending, and caring. These are poems rich with the life of the world, flocking with birds and bees both literal and metaphorical, but also closely attentive to the quiddities of language and the motions of the soul.”

Culture and Commerce

The Commercial Society: Foundations and Challenges in a Global Age by Samuel Gregg. Lexington Books (Lanham, Maryland), 190 pp. cloth, $75.00; paper, $18.00, 2007. This book is a valuable examination of the historical, social, cultural, and legal bases for commercial...

The Traditionalist Moment

Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, Gun-Loving Organic Gardeners, Evangelical Free-Range Farmers, Hip Homeschooling Mamas, Right-Wing Nature Lovers, and Their Diverse Tribe of Countercultural Conservatives Plan to Save America (Or At Least the Republican Party)...

Bookman in Colombia

On December 15, El Heraldo, one of Colombia's largest newspapers, published a Spanish version of Michael J. Ard's review, "Latin America's Five Deadly Sins," which appeared in our Spring 2007 issue. Here is the link.

Bookman Web Exclusives

We are pleased to announce web-only reviews as a new feature of the University Bookman. This new content will enable us to reach our readers more regularly with reviews of notable books, interviews, and other features. Our first online feature—ironically—is a review...

About our Web Exclusives

We are pleased to announce web-only reviews as a new feature of the Bookman. This new content will enable us to reach our readers more regularly with reviews of notable books, interviews, and other features. Check back often for new exclusive content!

Man and His Eschatological Destiny

Andy Catlett: Early Travels by Wendell Berry. Shoemaker and Hoard (Emeryville, California), 160 pp., $23.00 cloth, 2006.Wendell Berry is a writer/philosopher who has taken up his pen to examine the question, what is the purpose of human existence? He succeeds at his...

Reassessing Homo Economicus

It has been some years since the University Bookman has tackled issues relating to the economy. In the interim, new scholarship has continued to demolish the god-term “economic man,” that modernist construct of utilitarian calculation and rational self-interest. Such...

New Bookman and Barzun

The new issue of the University Bookman is on its way. Featuring a special section on the humane economy, the issue includes reviews of books on agrarianism, Wendell Berry, Tocqueville, the commercial society, and other subjects. As a preview, here is Tracy Lee...

Books in Little

A Loeb Classical Library Reader (Harvard University Press, 234 pp.) The Loeb series of Latin and Greek texts, bound in their distinctive red and green, respectively, has been a standby for readers of the classics for generations. While other series are more focused on...

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.

To Find Eyes to See
@NadyaWilliams81 on "More Than a Matter of Taste: The Moral Imagination and the Spirit of Literature" by Joshua Hren. @WordOnFire Luminor

Rural America as It Really Is
Jason C. Phillips on "Faith, Family, and Flag: Branson Entertainment and the Idea of America" by Joanna Dee Das. @UChicagoPress

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