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.

Poetry of Transcendence

“A related, and most welcome, theme in Killing Orpheus is memento mori, a reminder of the inevitability of death. Our lives have become so long, easy, and comfortable that death has become something of an inconvenient truth, which many prefer to ignore or forget. McClatchey is not one of them, thankfully: the collection abounds with reminders of our mortality.”

The Consensus Reality

“In his study of an underlying consensus regarding education, race, and gender, Jonathan Butcher has performed a valuable service for those who wish to understand the true nature of the so-called division within American society today.”

Britain at the Turning Point

“A major theme that runs through Allport’s study is the shifting equilibrium of power relations between the United States and Britain. The war demonstrated that, as British power and resources dwindled, Britain became dependent on material and financial supplies from the United States.”

Letter from Italy

Debate on Relativism Many consider ethical relativism a pathology of the modern world, from which especially Europe and the West seriously suffer. Others see in relativism the very physiology of the West, and define it as a particular epistemological outlook which...

Marx of the Master Class

Calhoun and Popular Rule: The Political Theory of the Disquisition and Discourse by H. Lee Cheek (University of Missouri Press, 2001), 202 pages H. Lee Cheek’s study of John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) achieves exactly what it sets out to do. It offers a close...

No Samson?

Thinking about the Presidency: Documents and Essays from the Founding to the Present, edited by Gary L. Gregg (Rowman & Littlefield 2005) Thinking about the Presidency fulfills a critical need for professors and students of the presidency. By blending the...

The Autumn of the Autocrat

After Fidel: The Inside Story of Castro’s Regime and Cuba’s Next Leader, by Brian Latell (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, 288 pages) Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant, by Humberto E. Fontova (Regnery, 2005, 256 pages) Imagine a young man poised to enter the prime of his...

The Rarity of the God-fearing Man

A Michigan farmer, some years ago, climbed to the roof of his silo, and there he painted, in great red letters that the Deity could see, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. . . .” Without knowledge of fear, we cannot know order in personality...

Revisiting Viereck

Conservatism Revisited: The Revolt Against Ideology, by Peter Viereck. With a major new study of Peter Viereck and Conservatism by Claes G. Ryn (Transaction Publishers, 2005, 205 pages) Developments in recent American politics have raised questions about the...

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...

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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