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.”

Words from the Hearth

“Each poem maps a path on the journey by sharing the personal and religious experiences of a young woman falling in love, getting married, and then expecting and welcoming children. As a reader who tends to prefer prose to poetry, I appreciate the narrative arc as well as the opportunity to reminisce, through Reardon’s work, on my own similar experiences. Reardon’s writing is intensely religious, elevating the seemingly mundane aspects of home life to a spiritual level. Because it draws such powerful connections, it invites readers to ponder how even the simplest details of their lives can lead to the divine.”

A Knight of the American West

“His new book is an exciting chivalric adventure and romance, while also being a contemporary American novel set in the Southwest USA. Exceptionally well written, its straightforward crafting is an encouragement to the reader who eagerly returns to its pages.”

Coming to Terms with Sherman

“…Glenn Arbery has contemporary America down cold, the more so since the cultural variations between North and South are far from being as marked as they were even fifty years ago.”

Reclaiming Our Cities

Reclaiming Our Cities

“As an introduction to many important ideas, Beyer excels in explaining concepts on urban affairs in a clear, accessible way… As a practical guide to transforming cities, though, it has flaws and room for improvement.”

The Perennial Relevance of Edmund Burke

The Perennial Relevance of Edmund Burke

“…a putative freedom outside of the moral norms of the Christian religion (whether expressed as liberalism, socialism, communism, or some versions of conservatism) is quite a different thing to the real freedom to which human beings have, in Burke’s thinking, a natural right.”

The Perennial Relevance of Edmund Burke

The Inadequacy of Burke in Part

“…even those with a just passing knowledge of Burke know that… he is famous for… his skepticism, very qualified acceptance, and sometimes vehement denunciation, of rights-talk in general and of politics grounded in ‘natural rights’ or ‘rights of man’ in particular.”

Morality in Adam Smith

Morality in Adam Smith

“Liberty in the Smithian sense was not exercised by utility-maximizing atoms but by relational creatures in community. Klein… shows that the advent of Smith-inspired liberal political economy was grounded in natural jurisprudence and moral philosophy.”

The Personal Foundation of Reality

The Personal Foundation of Reality

“…the source of reality itself must be personal in some way. As Rasmussen puts it: ‘A big thesis, then, that emerges from my inquiry is this: reality is deeply personal…”

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.

@EvieSolheim By the way, the @KirkCenter takes literature, ethics, character formation, & cultural renewal seriously

Encourage you to participate in our @ubookman academic journal & the fellowship of our literary & academic community, enshrining what Dr. Kirk calls “the Moral Imagination”

Load More

Shop through Regnery
Support the Kirk Center
& University Bookman