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.

The Long Decline of Liberalism

“Pilkington describes the many societal ills that this destruction of hierarchies entailed… While Pilkington’s diagnosis of liberalism as the source of these diseases seems sound, his confidence that global liberalism is collapsing rapidly and that the immediate future will be ‘post-liberal’ leaves me uneasy. Even if we grant that liberalism is an inherently unstable way of organizing a polity, does that really allow us to predict just how rapidly that instability will lead to a downfall?”

The British Empire on Trial

“[Biggar’s] book amounts to a defense of the British Empire. He succeeds at giving the reader ample reasons not to hate his home country, but also misses an opportunity to use his unique training to pioneer a more innovative form of history.”

A Heroic Little Sparrow Shines Brightly in the Dark World of Children’s Literature

“The story is as delightful and charming as it sounds, recounting the odyssey of a virtuous sparrow named Passer who must move his family to a new home after ‘big yellow machines’ appear at his home.”

The Circumnavigation of Eliot

The Circumnavigation of Eliot

“A company of scholars, led by Professor Ronald Schuchard, labored for a decade to produce this monumental scholarly work… The project was brilliantly and painstakingly accomplished, and it is having a marked effect on scholarly studies of Eliot…”

The Waste Land at 100

The Waste Land at 100

“If poets came to speak less clearly in consequence of Eliot’s great reputation, Eliot also reestablished poetry as a way of coming to know reality and to perceive the order of being even amid the wreckage of history. If he staged a revolution, he also made possible a restoration.”

Returning to the Heights of Statesmanship

Returning to the Heights of Statesmanship

“…Mahoney exhorts us to hope for more from our leaders and to demand more from ourselves—more gratitude for great statesmen and the inheritance that they have passed on to us, more openness to human excellence and its importance, more conviction about moral truth, and more rigorous thought about the characteristics of statesmanship.”

Reclaiming Protestantism At Its Best

Reclaiming Protestantism At Its Best

“…the Reformers celebrated by so many churches today shared a far “thicker” vision of society than the American frontier ideal… Theirs was an era of magistracy and hierarchy, not of lone cowboys gazing out upon an untapped wilderness.”

On the Fall of Fated Men

On the Fall of Fated Men

“Ranging over six centuries of invasion, immigration, and royal intrigue, Morris recounts the fascinating tale of that elusive bunch known, quite rightly, as the Anglo-Saxons.”

Society: A Community of Souls

Society: A Community of Souls

“…we must make it our mission to revive the America that Tocqueville so eloquently wrote about: an America characterized by strong social bonds, neighborliness, and a collective willingness to govern ourselves.”

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.

For America250, @lsheahan enters the fray:
What the American Revolution Secured: Order, Justice, and Freedom
A "revolution not made, but prevented.” Russell Kirk fondly and frequently quoted E. J. Payne’s pithy summary of Burke’s view of the Glorious Revolution.

"So yes, Lord Alfred, perhaps you are right after all. ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world!  Perhaps one last Ulyssean adventure remains beyond the sunset, and perhaps some work of noble note may yet be done."

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