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.

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“The pieces are set primarily at Hadas’s house in rural northern Vermont, and the house itself becomes the intersection where the tangible and intangible, the present and past, even prose and poetry, inextricably blend.”

Preparing for Leisure

“If modern technology is making it increasingly possible to have the opportunities for leisure that Athenian citizens had, then there has never been a better time to rediscover this forgotten ideal.”

Michigan’s Neglected Civil War Governor

“Blair, as Dempsey notes, certainly fit the bill of a radical. The notion that slavery’s expansion needed to cease—the Lincolnian proposition—was far too mild for him; he wanted to kill slavery where it was, and he nurtured a burgeoning community of like-minded institutions—civic, educational, political, and religious—in Michigan.”

What Do Fungi Have to Do with Athens?

What Do Fungi Have to Do with Athens?

“[Sheldrake] hasn’t produced a polemic against the ideal of the self-sufficient liberal political subject, or even a policy brief in favor of honoring our interdependence with the natural world. Instead he just invites readers to consider whether, perhaps, they are lichen.”

Perspicuity at the Bar of History

Perspicuity at the Bar of History

“In what is undoubtedly the most comprehensive treatment of the topic to date, Chalk’s book meticulously breaks down the history and philosophy behind perspicuity, arguing that the doctrine has ultimately failed to achieve both spiritual truth and Christian unity.”

Two Cities: The Public and the Private

Two Cities: The Public and the Private

“The era of superlatives, the French Revolution, was the time when real people, tired of their private sufferings, abandoned their real names to become citoyens… Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, and other pompous terms, took the place of the real, little, and unwordable affections, turning friends into foes, in the name of an unreal solidarity.”

Remembering Our Unruly Character

Remembering Our Unruly Character

“…Frohnen and McAllister are explicit… that Americans must ‘rediscover’ their unruly character, and it becomes clear that their efforts to mine the historical roots of this defiant, ornery nature are grounded in a concern to push back and save the American way of life…”

Why Public Reason Fails

Why Public Reason Fails

“It is only at a local level that true political deliberation among citizens can take place. Holston’s central message is that, if deliberative democrats are serious about their enterprise, they ought to be working to devolve decision making to the local level as far as possible.”

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.

"In an age when so many of our inherited institutions seem to be unraveling under the pressures of a restless, self-regarding individualism, it is a rare and welcome thing to encounter a book that speaks with quiet conviction about the things that have long sustained the American

"If classical teachers believe that truth, beauty, and goodness can indeed change the world, then the sort of student (and teacher and school) described by @AnthonyEsolen is a net gain for this world. And his Classical Catechism serves as a helpful tool in building the necessary

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