The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Support the University Bookman during our annual Kirktober Fundraiser, and receive an audio copy of Kirk’s short story, What Shadows We Pursue.

Kirktober 2025: James Panero and Adam Simon on the Haunted House

October 28, 2025

On Tuesday, October 28, at 6:00 PM, you are invited to join University Bookman editor Luke Sheahan, Hollywood screenwriter Adam Simon, and New Criterion executive editor James Panero, as they explore the theme of the haunted house in gothic literature and its relationship to conservative thought and imagination.

Register for this free webinar here.

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.”

Aliens to Life

“…the mundane activities of ‘waiting in line, writing by hand, remote learning, navigation, boredom’ may be the only thing keeping us from becoming machines.”

The Postwar British Conservative Movement

“Kowol identifies three prominent stands within the conservative movement in Britain that, to use Nash’s words, wanted ‘to change it, restore it, preserve it.'”

Leisure and the Lost Ascent

“…leisure cannot be achieved when it is sought as a means to an end, even if that end is something as noble as the salvation of Western civilization. The ultimate root of leisure, divine worship, is beyond the reach of the human will. Though leisure requires willing openness to God’s grace, even that openness is itself a grace.”

The Causes of Moral Agency

by Rachel Ferguson | Oct 30, 2022

“Particularly in these hyper-polarized times, conservatives should be the first to break out of the blame-the-system-versus-blame-the-victim false dichotomy.”

Resurrecting John Keats

by Paul Krause | Oct 30, 2022

“Lucasta Miller, in her brilliant new book on Keats, writes, ‘To read him is to participate in an invisible web that has connected human beings over millennia via the literary imagination.'”

Partisan Citizens

by Jeffrey Folks | Oct 23, 2022

“Citizenship demands open-minded discourse among persons from different backgrounds and with varying ideas in the interest of forming and preserving a consensus concerning the most advisable form of government.”

Navigating the “In Between” of Belief

by Rev. Joseph Scolaro | Oct 23, 2022

“…Desmond offers many incisive and rich critiques of an atheistic contemporary world as well as of static and insufficient presentations of religious belief, all from within his particular conceptual framework.”

Richard Weaver Explained Our Cultural Predicament Over 70 Years Ago

by Francis P. Sempa | Oct 16, 2022

“The past shows unvaryingly that when a people’s freedom disappears, it goes not with a bang, but in silence amid the comfort of being cared for. That is the dire peril in the present trend toward statism.” – Richard Weaver

The Traditions That Gave Us Homer

by J. L. Wall | Oct 16, 2022

“Parry… ultimately became the most influential Classical—and perhaps literary—scholar of the twentieth-century precisely because he was able to side-step the Homeric Question altogether.”