The University Bookman
Reviewing Books that Build Culture
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The Quest for Community at 70
“Democracy, as Nisbet imagined it, was not the opposite of fascism and communism, but, in its essence, possibly as totalitarian as either, just in a kinder, more gentle fashion.”
Kirk 101: The Politics of Prudence
“The vision of Politics of Prudence is as an inoculation against the ‘sham religion and sham philosophy’ of ideology. It is not a better ideology that we need, but rather none at all.”
The Prophet of Imprudence
“As the conservative mind is again on the defensive in America… The Politics of Prudence suggests that no less than the imprudence of conservatives is much to blame for the latest rout. Thirty years ago, few conservatives wanted to hear such a message. Today it calls out as a testament to what went wrong and a corrective for what’s to come.”
The Politics of Prudence: Introduction to the 2023 Edition
“The politics of prudence assumes that imperfection is a permanent part of human character and human society. We grope toward a tolerable order that accepts imperfection, the devil we know, while avoiding greater evils, the devil we do not know. Preservation of civilization, as imperfect as it is, is the conservative’s work.”
Germans at War
“…Oxford military historian Peter H. Wilson attempts to take aim at another popular narrative about World War II: that Germans are essentially militant people whose history inevitably led to World War II and National Socialism.”
The Conscience of a Nation
“Examining the work and lives of prominent African Americans in the nation’s history, Rogers argues that these individuals sought to transform the United States into a racially just society by having Americans live up to the country’s democratic ideals.”
A Premature Treatment of Our Post-Covid Urban Issues
“Is [the book] about public health? Is it about urban economics? Is it about sociology? Unfortunately, by trying to cover all these topics in such an in-depth way in one book, [the authors] end up doing none of them well.”
The Graces of Death and Nature
“Three of America’s most famous writers and intellectuals, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and William James, came to believe that death was a beginning, a moment of renewal and regeneration, not the finality of dissolution.”
Right Populism
“[Kendall] thus seems likely to remain a challenging figure within the conservative intellectual tradition, but the challenges he offers his readers should make a study of his thought a more profitable exercise, not less.”
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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