The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Join Kirktober and help support the mission of the University Bookman

 

Each week the Bookman brings you fresh reviews of the books that build culture, and essays that enliven the Permanent Things. Last year nearly 90,000 visitors engaged with the Bookman’s reviews, all free of charge and with no advertising to disrupt the reading experience. Our writers are touching hearts and minds across the globe with their reviews, bringing wisdom, creativity, and beauty to bear on the most important conversations happening in literature and culture.

Would you consider a gift to help us continue this work?

If just 1 in 4 of our readers contributed $10, we’d dramatically increase our capacity to recruit the brightest young writers and tackle more books and topics, all with a Kirkian angle. We’ve set a goal of raising $20k this month in order to continue our mission. Exceeding this amount will allow us to expand our work even more.

If you love the Bookman, and read us with regularity, we’d greatly appreciate your generous support this month.

With gratitude,

Luke Sheahan, Ph.D., editor
The University Bookman

P.S. As a special thank you to all Bookman supporters this month, we’ll send you a link to an audio recording of Ex Tenebris, one of Kirk’s best ghostly short stories. We think you’ll really enjoy it.

Campaign Progress

John Adams: Russell Kirk’s Founding Federalist

“…[Kirk] located the mainstream of the American Founding not with the Jeffersonian Republicans, but with their rivals in the Federalist party. Kirk admired them not only as practical statesmen, but also as anti-revolutionary thinkers in their own right. As he put it, the Constitution they supported was both ‘the most successful conservative device in the history of the world’ and a ‘great monument’ to the Federalists.”

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 Truths We Keep Coming Back and Back to”: A Critical Sampling of Gloria Whelan’s Short Fiction

“If Kirk—himself a superb literary critic—considered Whelan ‘the best writer of short stories ever to inhabit Michigan,’ it stands to reason that her works merit wider attention.”

Every Line Read Is a Gain

“That is the whole of Campo’s argument, and the whole of her temperament, in a single anecdote: the conviction that attention to something perfect is not an evasion of catastrophe but the only serious response to it. It is also why she is worth the time of anyone who reads Wendell Berry, Emily Dickinson, Russell Kirk, or, and especially, Simone Weil.”

Confronting our Current Digital Malaise

“Luke Burgis has written an interesting book exploring the tension between belonging and differentiation.”

Evil and Good in Cormac McCarthy

Evil and Good in Cormac McCarthy

“Vereen M. Bell’s primary contention is that McCarthy presents us with a dead end—confronting us, in a kind of stoical existentialism, with the universality of death and non-being.”

TIME Marches On… Past 100 

TIME Marches On… Past 100 

“As TIME ‘goes on,’ therefore, and we commemorate its achievements, the career  of Henry Robinson Luce, the ‘Man of TIME’s Century,’ deserves recognition.”

The Missing Virtue

The Missing Virtue

“In [the book], the virtue of humility is presented as the antithesis of, and thus an antidote to, the narcissism that can adversely affect interpersonal dynamics…”

Remaking Cold War Diplomacy

Remaking Cold War Diplomacy

“[Eames’s] latest book… takes a transnational approach to the nuclear 1980s by examining the strategic coordination of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher during the waning days of the Cold War.”

The Achievement of the Irish Poets

The Achievement of the Irish Poets

“…for Devlin, as for MacGreevy and Coffey, the purpose of art, including that of literary expression, was to call forth wonder, beauty, goodness, and truth, which required drawing from the rich stores of both philosophy and faith.”

The Last European

The Last European

“[The book] is a fascinating portrait of the collapse of the glorious cultural world of the first half of the 20th century, one that has much relevance to what is happening to the culture of the West today.”

A “Sputnik Moment” for Civics

A “Sputnik Moment” for Civics

“The key to effective civics is for teachers to engage students in ‘conversations based on primary sources.’ Immersion in such conversations, the authors contend, ‘makes us feel part of the story, making it ours too.'”

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.

@ubookman But this work requires resources to help edit, publish, and promote the content while maintaining a fund to provide writers a modest honorarium for their work. If you'v been a longtime reader but have never contributed, we'd love to have you join us: https://buff.ly/MLnMl4e

@ubookman In 2027, we plan to work with more than 30 writers to publish nearly 150 reviews and reach more than 100k readers around the world. Part of our vision for next year is to incorporate new voices in the Bookman — and to introduce new audiences to a distinctive conservative view.

Sign up to receive the Bookman each Friday directly in your inbox.

* indicates required

Shop through Creed and Culture Publishing