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.”

Wall Street Journal

We were pleased to see the aptly titled op-ed “The Conservative Mind” by Peter Berkowitz in The Wall Street Journal on May 29, 2007. Very clearly written and helpful.

The Moral Imagination

The moral imagination is an enduring source of inspiration that elevates us to first principles as it guides us upwards towards virtue and wisdom and redemption. In the franchise bookshops of the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred eighty-one, the shelves are...

Returning to the Real

On Essays and LettersHenri de Lubac, the great French Jesuit theologian, had a collection of nineteen letters that he had received from the French historian of philosophy Étienne Gilson (Letters of Étienne Gilson to Henri de Lubac [Ignatius, 1988]). After Gilson’s...

The Irreconcilable Faces of French Conservatism

Impossible Conservatism [Le Conservatisme impossible: Libéraux et réactionnaires en France depuis 1789] by François Huguenin. La Table Ronde (Paris), 395 pp., €21.50, 2006. While in America, defining and redefining conservatism has long been a conservative pastime,...

A Resurrection Apologetic

Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense by N. T. Wright. Harper Collins (San Francisco) 240 pp., $29.50, cloth, 2006. Tom Wright is the author of many scholarly and popular books, including a popular-level translation and commentary of the New Testament (the...

A Case for Insular History

The Discovery of Islands by J. G. A. Pocock. Cambridge University Press (Cambridge), 358 pp., $75.00, 2006. Each generation revises history to fit its own needs and preoccupations because,while the past itself remains constant, the prism through with it is seen...

Let Us Walk in the Light of the Lord

Peace in the Promised Land: A Realist Scenario edited by Srdja Trifkovic. Rockford Institute (Rockford, Illinois), 2005. 368 pp., $29.95 paper.Political science, properly understood, can be capable of seeking “the truth of existence,” of establishing order in society....

Red Mist

How Small Presses Rescue Classic Genre Writers from OblivionThe first two generations of the twentieth century were reading generations, devoting part of their hard earned leisure to the major writers of the day—Booth Tarkington, Sinclair Lewis, and F. Scott...

Tiber, Thames, Potomac

That the First Amendment establishes a “separation” between church and state throughout all levels of government has long been a stubborn myth of American life, shared by both nativists and, at least since the early part of the last century, most liberals. Philip...

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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