The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Frontier Fiction at Its Best

“This classic frontier story—of the fostered orphan who escapes the baddies who killed his family and who returns to wreak vengeance upon them—is enriched by a vivid depiction of Comanche culture and traditional way of life and by narrative motifs whose roots are deep in the soil of myth and fable…”

The Postmodern Poetry of J.R.R. Tolkien

“Even if Tolkien did not understand his literary enterprise as distinctively modernist, many of the techniques he deployed—the creation of a secondary world, for instance, or his invented languages, and above all the metatextual integration of poetry and prose—nonetheless bear a resemblance to the experiments in letters conducted by his more avant-garde peers.”

Catholic Zen

“Walsh’s philosophy is timely. For the Christian, it’s imperative to try to understand the mystery of the Trinity and always will be, so theology of the person is destined to be a never-completed project. For everybody else, the question of the person has invaded our daily lives. Invaded is the wrong word, of course. The person is always there, but occasionally we glimpse deeply the persons that are woven into our lives. Disputations on abortion and euthanasia reduce to warring conceptions of the person, and now artificial intelligence challenges commonplace understandings of persons and relationships.”

Outlining Sanity in the Garden

“…there are those books like The Tao of Vegetable Gardening by Carol Deppe, which is a beautiful hybrid: mostly how-to gardening advice, but laced with a meditational attitude that, though rarely overt, informs the book as a whole… [It] is part of a rich bed of American gardening literature that, in the words of M.E. Bradford, mixes ‘practical agricultural advice and moral reflection.’”

Every Mann

Every Mann

“…Mann blends those aforementioned Big Questions with little daily ones of eternal significance…”

Saving the West By Keeping It Real

Saving the West By Keeping It Real

“…Klavan applies his extensive knowledge of classical literature and the Western canon to properly frame today’s challenges and help people take appropriate action.”

Reagan as Peacemaking Cold Warrior

Reagan as Peacemaking Cold Warrior

“Inboden’s work does a lot to explain this dichotomy as part of Reagan’s larger vision: to exploit the weaknesses in the Soviet system while building up American strength with the goal of causing a collapse in the Soviet system.”

Oh Yeah Baby Eat It

Oh Yeah Baby Eat It

“Bottum’s voice is confident and idiosyncratic, playful and wise, plainspoken and deliberate, concerned with dramas large and dramas small.”

The Wisdom of Medieval Scholasticism

The Wisdom of Medieval Scholasticism

“The book not only makes a worthy contribution to anyone interested in understanding Medieval philosophy and the thought of Duns Scotus, but to everybody seeking to deepen their appreciation of human existence and its place in ultimate reality.”

Political Theology for Realists

Political Theology for Realists

“…even those who might diverge theologically will find this work to be an extremely useful short primer on the history of Christian political thought.”

The Book Gallery

A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.

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