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.

The Enduring Sources of the Permanent Things

“The result is less a polemic against the present than a gentle yet firm invitation to remember what we have nearly forgotten—that the good life is not a solitary pursuit of personal authenticity but a shared enterprise of commitment, sacrifice, and mutual regard. What makes the book so especially resonant is its refusal to treat these themes as abstract ideals.”

Talking Classical Education

“It is an introduction to the pedagogical life of a classical school. It is a philosophical argument for a particular approach to being a classical teacher. It is a work of cumulative experiences which manifest in teacherly wisdom. And it is a treatise aimed at critiquing the Modern Industrial Model of Education which has characterized the last several decades of American schooling.”

Liberal Education and Its Critics

“Taylor’s biggest concern appears as he nears his conclusion and is not so much that the humanities envy the sciences but that the humanities are largely responsible for their own destruction. He writes, ‘…perhaps the very project of thinking about our values—a project at the heart of the arts and humanities broadly conceived—is either feared or no longer widely valued in our society….there is a powerful and increasingly unselfconscious utilitarianism at work.’”

The Babbitt School of Conservatism

The Babbitt School of Conservatism

“Viereck and Kirk—the one a Pulitzer-winning poet, the other a highly regarded author of eerie fiction—understood the nexus of morality, imagination, and politics. But the businessmen, journalists, policy experts, and politicians who came to define the conservative movement just a few years after the appearance of The Conservative Mind did not.”

The Babbitt School of Conservatism

The Conservative Need for Conservative Philosophy

“Ryn does not take sides in the ideological wars but urges conservatives to reject ideology altogether and to engage in deeper philosophical thinking. Philosophy does the opposite of ideology. It recognizes complexity and gropes toward a deeper understanding of reality that builds on the insights of previous thinkers. There are no final answers in true philosophy… Moreover, monistic, ideological thinking is inconsistent with constitutional politics, which requires compromise and consensus.”

The Babbitt School of Conservatism

A Half Century of Conservative Criticism

“…the most important theme of his essays suggests that all the common answers about where conservatism went wrong avoid a more fundamental one: conservatives have been too obsessed with politics.”

Literary Virtue and Vice

Literary Virtue and Vice

“Griffis, Ooms, and Roberts offer practices of thought and attention that those eager to read deeply would do well to implement. Yet those eager to learn how Christianity ought to inform their reading and thinking would do well to consult other writers less concerned with rehearsing the language of our milieu, such as C.S. Lewis, Flannery O’Connor, T.S. Eliot, Dana Gioia.”

JP O’Malley Interviews Author Maurice Samuels

JP O’Malley Interviews Author Maurice Samuels

“‘Dreyfus’s Jewishness played a major role’ in convincing many within the army hierarchy to believe he was a traitor and a spy, Samuels stresses… This, in essence, is the main thesis put forward in [the book]. ‘Clearly, you cannot write about this case without mentioning the fact that Dreyfus was Jewish, or bringing up the role of antisemitism,’ the historian points out.”

The Left Wing Patriot

The Left Wing Patriot

“A man of the left and an American patriot, [Peretz] is a rare bird today—and, therefore, possibly even a controversial one, not to mention an iconoclastic one.” 

Will You Also Go Away?

Will You Also Go Away?

“The suggestions that these True Confessions pose for renewal are aligned, whether they come from bishops or laypeople: we must recover the view that the Church is not an institution but a community founded on encountering Jesus Christ and living radically for him.”

Sailing East

Sailing East

“As we push deeper into the third decade of the twenty-first century, the sense of boredom and anxiety of the early twenty-first century only seems to increase. What is needed is a renewed sense of adventure, confidence, and patriotism—the same sense of adventure, confidence, and patriotism that propelled the East India Company to create the wealth and wonder of the modern world.”

The Republic and the American Right

The Republic and the American Right

“…Kevin Slack traces our continuing national horror back to its roots, America’s roots, in his scathing new book… Slack dedicates his screed to patriotic Americans ‘disgusted by our rotting plutocracy…'”

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.

.@JM_Butcher himself admits that there are in fact important divisions within American society, but he believes that “Americans are united on some very important questions that are driving debates in statehouses, schoolhouses, and even your house.” In this, as in nearly all that

Despite [Kirk's] and others’ efforts to prevent further decline in transcendent beliefs, more than a century later, it is clear that those Americans who adhere to them represent a small and frequently marginalized minority. @fhmcclatchey must be counted among their number, for he

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