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.

A Problem Deeper than Groupthink

“Now a new volume comes our way from the busy desk of Robert P. George… an essay collection spanning subjects from Catholicism and civic order to ‘gnostic liberalism’ to the interplay of markets and civil society. Despite the broad subject matter, George’s overarching aim in this new collection is to discern how it is that civilization evolved from the ‘Age of Faith’ in the medieval period to the ‘Age of Reason’ of the Enlightenment and its aftermath, only to now arrive at what he calls the ‘Age of Feelings.’” 

Reconsidering Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Roosevelt’s true genius was the practice of politics. But his success at that practice did not come without costs of its own. Roosevelt may well have believed that his political success and his country’s economic recovery would proceed along parallel paths. But the evidence suggests otherwise. In fact, reading Beito leads one to surmise that the Rooseveltian preoccupation with the politics of leadership may well have significantly delayed and even retarded the very recovery that was supposed to result from his leadership.”

A Forgotten Russian Immigrant Poet in Hollywood

“Nostalgia unquestionably captivates all émigrés. There you may be, decades gone from the old country, and glad of it. Yet still you long for the taste of familiar foods, the sight of those Russian birch trees, and the sound of the language you never have the opportunity to speak outside the home.”

Christian Freedom and the Western Political Tradition

Christian Freedom and the Western Political Tradition

“For Schindler, there is no tradition without freedom, and no freedom without tradition. These ideas are a precious heritage to be guarded with great care, because they are a gift of the wise born before the present and the God who inspired their wisdom.”

The Spiritualist Origins of Modern Disorder

The Spiritualist Origins of Modern Disorder

“…the dominant characteristic of the new spirituality was the inflation, as egregious as it was absurd, of thought, of language, and of self: every man (or woman) a prophet, every man his own priest, every man a genius, each dedicated to what Dominic Green calls ‘the aristocrat within.’”

A Time for Restoration

A Time for Restoration

“…Manent and Scruton offer affirmation that the Good is supported in the nature of things, that human beings are capable of cultivating and acting according to political reason, and that the integrity of a national community is requisite for virtue and liberty.”

Reading as a Spiritual Practice

Reading as a Spiritual Practice

“…Wilson declares, ‘there is a different way of reading for Christians than for others.’ Her subtitle is meant quite literally: ‘reading is a spiritual discipline akin to fasting and prayer.'”

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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