The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Join friends of the Bookman in New York City on December 8, 2025 for the Gerald Russello Memorial Lecture.

William F. Buckley Jr.: Literary Figure 

“…the American public intellectual might best be appreciated as a literary figure. Producing about 350,000 words for publication yearly at the peak of his career, Buckley was never at a loss for what to say or how to say it.”

Defending the Christian Faith

“In 100 Tough Questions For Catholics: Common Obstacles To Faith Today… David G. Bonagura, Jr. gives bite-sized answers to dozens of big questions about the faith.”

William F. Buckley Jr.: Literary Figure 

“…the American public intellectual might best be appreciated as a literary figure. Producing about 350,000 words for publication yearly at the peak of his career, Buckley was never at a loss for what to say or how to say it.”

Reality Check for Politics

“…Lawrence Mead throws tact out the window and, instead, lays bare our collective failure to properly and honestly address myriad social changes that have occurred since the 1960s—namely, widening cultural difference and group balkanization; unprecedented levels of immigration from the non-West; and the rise of identitarianism, especially from the social justice-Left.”

How to Love What is Permanent

“Throughout the book, Gibbs pleads with his readers that we not only think of the soul in terms of salvation but also in terms of health. Good taste won’t save one’s soul. But it will nourish the soul and incline the soul towards virtue much more than the bad taste we will acquire from mediocre things.”

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.

How to Love What is Permanent
Sarah Reardon on "Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity" by Joshua Gibbs.
@CirceInstitute

Personalism in the Age of AI Grant R. Martsolf on "Personalism for the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honor of David Walsh" Edited by Thomas W. Holman and Richard Avramenko.
@RLPublisher

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