The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Watch James Panero of the New Criterion discuss “The Urbanity of Russell Kirk” at the 2025 Gerald Russello Memorial Lecture.

The Urbanity of Russell Kirk

“The urban fabric must also be mended and darned through continuous upkeep. The city is not yours to experiment. From Russell to Russello, our ancestral spirits cast their shadows whether or not we choose to observe the city of god in the cities of men.”

After the Republic: Tacitus on the End of a Free State

“…you don’t really have to ‘wonder’ if you’ve lost the republic… This is one of the lessons of the first few paragraphs of Tacitus’ Annals. In this dour, grumpy review of the first decades of the Roman Empire, Tacitus gives us seven signs that the republic is well and truly dead.”

Why Cervantes’ Don Quixote Matters

Don Quixote makes life the protagonist. The affirmation of life is truly Don Quixote’s quest. The venerable knight-errant seeks more than life from his life.”

After Ideology but Before the Revolution: The Liberal Soul

“Walsh could give voice to a devastating criticism of the critics of liberal democracy because they forgot the most important aspect of what they chopped to pieces: there can be no analysis of liberal democracy outside the convictions that underpin it, namely mutual respect for the dignity and rights of others. There is no higher purpose possible than the affirmation of the infinite worth of each human being, of each ‘person,’ and the political consequences of that affirmation: to build that insight into the regimes of self-government.”

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...

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...

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.

After Ideology but Before the Revolution: The Liberal Soul
Barry Cooper on The Growth of the Liberal Soul (2nd Edition) by David Walsh. @undpress

Liberalism’s Death Has Been Greatly Exaggerated
Joseph R. Fornieri on The Growth of the Liberal Soul (2nd Edition) by David Walsh. @undpress

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