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.

The Audacious Russell Kirk

“Neither Eliot nor Kirk would justify surrender in the face of conflict, especially when order in the commonwealth is at stake.”

The Imaginative Russell Kirk

“Michael Lucchese has gathered 17 essays in which Kirk discusses not only the Founding, but also the nation that the Revolution created, the distinctive nature of the people who imagined and developed it, and the traditions they inherited and adapted.”

Remembering Robert Fagles: From Suffering to Meaning

“[Fagles] took as the essence of tragedy Aeschylus’s phrase ‘pathei mathos,’ ‘learning via suffering,’ which contained in it the belief that we could reap a harvest of knowledge from the pain.”

We Still Need Family, Religion, and Tradition

We Still Need Family, Religion, and Tradition

“In the end… it always comes down to the ancient story of secular humanism versus Christian belief. Is there room for yet another book on this theme? Of course there is, and there always will be, so long as fallen man remains fallen.”

Help Yourself

Help Yourself

“All Shrier does—and does well—is to put into words, with ample sourcing, the feelings parents have been sharing with each other online and at the morning bus stop. The kids aren’t growing up. They’re a mess. And so are the therapists. “

The Paradoxical Ideology

The Paradoxical Ideology

“Rousseau’s ideas have influenced both theorists and practitioners of democracy, such as Thomas Jefferson, Woodrow Wilson, George W. Bush, John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, and Jacques Maritain. For Finley, the common thread in this group is belief in the ideology of democratism. For each of these figures, democracy is perceived as the ultimate end for society, akin to religious salvation, and only an elite-controlled oligarchy can represent society’s ‘general will.’ The irony is that this oligarchy employs undemocratic means in the name of democracy to achieve its objectives.”

The Paradoxical Ideology

Democratism and False Equivalence

“Finley argues that advocates of ‘democratism’ have always argued for democracy not as a regime of popular government but as a set of political norms of enlightened public sharing commitments to further liberation from traditional bonds.”

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.

Decades ago, Robert Nisbet anticipated many of today’s concerns about loneliness, bureaucracy, and declining community. Luke C. Sheahan (@lsheahan) revisits the ideas behind those warnings and their relevance today.

Questions about first principles have become fashionable again. @HorcherF and @DanJTPitt apply generosity to smooth contention between intellectuals and politicians, they embrace the tension between theory and practice, and they highlight the power of particularity as a source of

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