The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Watch James Panero of the New Criterion discuss “The Urbanity of Russell Kirk” at the 2025 Gerald Russello Memorial Lecture.

The Urbanity of Russell Kirk

“The urban fabric must also be mended and darned through continuous upkeep. The city is not yours to experiment. From Russell to Russello, our ancestral spirits cast their shadows whether or not we choose to observe the city of god in the cities of men.”

After the New Left: Rereading Breaking Ranks

“The recent death of Norman Podhoretz prompted me to return to his ‘political memoir…’ Published in 1979, it deserves to be read or re-read today—and not simply as a historical account of his evolution from left to right during the 1960s and 1970s.”

Amici

“…art historian William E. Wallace chronicles the rivalry and friendship of Michelangelo and Titian, noting that the two Italian geniuses were not as variant in outlook and craft as is popularly believed.”

Catholic or Nothing

“Her accounts inspire reflection on the allure of Roman Catholicism to noteworthy nineteenth and twentieth century thinkers, specifically its stress on authority, tradition, and dogma, its aesthetics (especially liturgical), and its forceful critique of predominant secularist ideologies and systems. However different these converts were, then, they all found countercultural Roman Catholicism a compelling counterstatement to their epoch’s regnant religious and social norms.”

The Christian and Classical Roots of American Order

Recovering the Founders’ Constitutional Order

“The founders, in their affirmation of the rule of law and the principle of consent, resoundingly rejected modernity’s embrace of unlimited and largely arbitrary state power. Such a rejection depends ultimately on man being made in the image and likeness of the Christian creator God…”

Natural Law in the Protestant Tradition

Natural Law in the Protestant Tradition

“Jensen’s recent book… makes an important contribution to the aforementioned Aufklärung of Protestant natural law, particularly for the way in which it situates the Wittenberg reformer’s various statements about natural law in historical and polemical context rather than painting a picture of… seamless development…”

Identity Politics as Ersatz Religion

Identity Politics as Ersatz Religion

“As Mitchell sees it, there is only one path back from the ‘debilitating pathology’ of identity politics. It is for a community of thoughtful individuals to build, or rebuild, a society of honest ‘face-to-face’ relationships and a ‘politics of competence,’ and thereby restore a society in which individuals are judged on virtue, merit, and conduct rather than affiliation with one or more distinct identity groups.”

From The Quest for Community to the Restoration of Authority

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

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.”

Kirk 101: The Politics of Prudence

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 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.

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