The University Bookman
Reviewing Books that Build Culture
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Reconstructing Rights
The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction by Akhil Reed Amar (Yale University Press, 1998, 2005), 430 pages According to conventional understanding, the primary purpose behind the framing and ratification of the Constitution was to preserve liberty through a...
Liberalism and the Family Romance
John Stuart Mill, by Nicholas Capaldi (Cambridge 2004) A wickedly funny Monty Python song about the fondness of great thinkers for spiritus fermenti asserts how, “John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, drank half a pint of shandy, was particularly ill.”...
Books in Little
The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, and Morals, edited by Robert George and Jean Bethke Elshtain (Spence Publishing, 316 pp. $29.95) The meaning of marriage has become a prime subject of the culture wars. The subject is itself extremely difficult to...
Old China
On Essays and Letters On December 31, 2003, I chanced to come across the essay of Charles Lamb (1775–1834) entitled, “Old China.” Naturally, I thought it was about Ancient China. “China,” however, new or old, turned out to be...
Historical Consciousness and Its Enemies
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past, by John Lewis Gaddis (Oxford 2004) The Limits of History, by Constantin Fasolt (Chicago 2003) During the eighteenth century history flourished as literature. By the 1770s, however, a German school of...
Faith and the Marketplace
Business and Religion: A Clash of Civilizations? edited by Nicholas Capaldi (M&M Scrivener Press, 2005), 442 pages. This book is the first in a series published by M&M Scrivener Press, and edited by Nicholas Capaldi, the Legendre-Soule Distinguished Chair of...
Faith-based Initiatives in Action
Street Saints: Renewing America’s Cities by Barbara J. Elliott (Templeton Foundation Press, 2004), 320 pages Some of the world’s greatest people are largely unknown, for they accomplish positive, life-changing deeds in quiet, unannounced ways. Their work...
Shakespeare for Our Time
Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt. W. W. Norton (New York), 384 pp., $26.95 cloth, 2004; $14.95 paper, 2005. Some things we may never know about England’s greatest playwright and poet. What did Shakespeare think? Why and...
The Rebirth of Russian Conservatism
What We Fought For and Whom We Fought With by Natalia A. Narochnitskaya. Minuvshee (Moscow), 80 pp., cloth, 2005. Russia and Russians in World History by Natalia A. Narochnitskaya. Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniya (Moscow), 536 pp., cloth, 2004. Orthodox Civilization in a...
The Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.
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