The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Join friends of the Bookman in New York City on December 8, 2025 for the Gerald Russello Memorial Lecture.

William F. Buckley Jr.: Literary Figure 

“…the American public intellectual might best be appreciated as a literary figure. Producing about 350,000 words for publication yearly at the peak of his career, Buckley was never at a loss for what to say or how to say it.”

Defending the Christian Faith

“In 100 Tough Questions For Catholics: Common Obstacles To Faith Today… David G. Bonagura, Jr. gives bite-sized answers to dozens of big questions about the faith.”

Robert Nisbet’s The Social Philosophers Revisited: Conservative Pluralism versus the Mania for Unity

“…Nisbet shows that freedom and nobility (or excellence) can only survive when civic and social pluralism allows authentic human individuality and real (as opposed to ideologically-induced) community ample room to flourish.”

The Social Philosophers: A Reading for the Present

“…in Nisbet’s reading, conflict fulfills a paradoxical function: it is, to a large extent, the experience of uprooting and rupture that most strongly awakens the need for community. In other words, the longing for community becomes more conscious and pressing where community has been lost or weakened.”

A Sociology of the Permanent Things: Nisbet’s Tocquevillian Philosophy

“The great crisis of our time, which Tocqueville prophesied and Nisbet diagnosed, is the collapse of those intermediary institutions that can resist the drift toward democratic despotism.”

In Dialogue, We Dwell

In Dialogue, We Dwell

“…political sentiment in America has atrophied to ‘factionalism,’ or precisely that against which James Madison warned in Federalist No. 10…”

Shakespeare and the Real 

Shakespeare and the Real 

“…Shakespeare has indeed become, like the body of Patroclus, the center of one of the most violent skirmishes in the larger battle that rages over the gargantuan remains of the West.”

Can We Trust the Gospels?

Can We Trust the Gospels?

“…McGrew contends not only that there is strong external evidence for the God of the New Testament… but that there is also good internal evidence—the information conveyed in the biblical accounts corresponds to what we know about the way truthful people talk and write.”

Betting on Catastrophe 

Betting on Catastrophe 

“…who better than The New Criterion’s bench of deep thinkers to mull over James Burnham’s hypothesis—’Suicide is probably more frequent than murder as the end phase of a civilization’—with respect to Christendom’s funereal prospects.”

The War for the Second Age

The War for the Second Age

“At its core… Sibley’s volume is the story of a Fall, and as such gives readers unparalleled insight into the moral underpinnings of Tolkien’s world.”

The Book Gallery

A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.

Conservative Pluralism versus the Mania for Unity
Daniel Mahoney on THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHERS by Robert Nisbet. Foreword by @lsheahan. @AmPhilSociety Press.

The Social Philosophers: A Reading for the Present
Lucía Vallejo Rodríguez on THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHERS by Robert Nisbet. Foreword by @lsheahan @AmPhilSociety Press.

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