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.”

Where Conservatives Converse

Where Conservatives Converse

“It has been nearly sixty years since the founding of the Philadelphia… and its growth and development over the years as an intellectual home for all conservatives who accepted the premise of ordered liberty, is a testimony to the founders and those who have long carried on the legacy of the Society and its principles.”

Sexuality and Gender: Returning to the Sources

Sexuality and Gender: Returning to the Sources

Once in a very long while one finds a volume that checks four boxes: It is a joy to read; academically fair and well-informed; timely enough to be essential reading in a current debate; and not so thick that it can double as a doorstop. Brian Patrick Mitchell’s book on Christian sexuality and gender is such a rarity. One is tempted to add that in the current cultural climate, with so much errant nonsense being written about sexuality and gender, that his book should be required reading for any wanting to opine on the topic.

Unlikely Centers of Cultural Change

Unlikely Centers of Cultural Change

For a time, then, coffeehouses exercised a crucial but (today) largely unremarked influence upon the fashioning of Anglo-American civilization. Mr. Reynolds’s fine book seeks to remedy that deficiency.

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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