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.

To Find Eyes to See

“Hren selects earnest classics that have stood the test of time—books that generations of readers have found edifying and moving. But also, in the introduction and conclusion alike, Hren returns to another key point of fiction: it doesn’t just help us see extraordinary truth, although it can. More important is that fiction gives us eyes to see the transcendence of ordinary lives, including our own.”

Rural America as It Really Is

“Harold Bell Wright, regardless of how literary tastemakers viewed him in the 1920s, is the central figure in the origin of Branson. Though denigrated by the Baldwins and H. L. Menckens of his day, Wright was one of the century’s best-selling novelists.”

The Poet Watches Birds

“Jennifer A. Hartenburg’s debut collection of poems… offers such a poetic practice of waking, attending, and caring. These are poems rich with the life of the world, flocking with birds and bees both literal and metaphorical, but also closely attentive to the quiddities of language and the motions of the soul.”

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.

Register for our next book gallery on June 22, 2026:
Russell Kirk On America: How to Understand the Legacy of 1776

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