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.

John Adams: Russell Kirk’s Founding Federalist

“…[Kirk] located the mainstream of the American Founding not with the Jeffersonian Republicans, but with their rivals in the Federalist party. Kirk admired them not only as practical statesmen, but also as anti-revolutionary thinkers in their own right. As he put it, the Constitution they supported was both ‘the most successful conservative device in the history of the world’ and a ‘great monument’ to the Federalists.”

The Patriotic Russell Kirk

“Taken together, the essays in this collection have a distinctly American air, but one spiced by the enlivening spirit of a much longer historical consciousness.”

Jesuits and Revolutions

“…these… reveal Carola’s gift as a novelist, reminding the reader that the great theological and ecclesiastical questions of the age were debated and decided by flesh-and-blood human beings with normal needs and emotions.”

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.

Kirk saw poetry, fiction, tradition, and restraint as essential to understanding America and preserving its character. In his review of "On America," @cjscalia explores Kirk’s vision of the founding, statesmanship, literature, and the enduring ideas that have shaped the republic.

The Audacious Russell Kirk
Bruce P. Frohnen reviews "On America: How to Understand the Legacy of 1776" by Russell Kirk. Edited by Michael Lucchese.

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