The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Revivifying the Conservative Movement

“Roberts has perceived the deep and fundamental crisis within the American body politic, and that crisis is a spiritual crisis.”

The Centrality of Civic Virtue

“A just polity grows as we acquire a moral sense, which fosters attitudes and actions of benevolence toward others…”

Revivifying the Conservative Movement

“Roberts has perceived the deep and fundamental crisis within the American body politic, and that crisis is a spiritual crisis.”

Virtuous Living, Not Just for Philosophers

“Abela refers to both the cardinal virtues and their many subsidiary virtues as ‘super habits’ in order to tap into the popularity of recent books about the importance of habit formation.”

Genesis Through a Glass Darkly

Genesis Through a Glass Darkly

“Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis is not a commentary or a work of scholarship but a series of essays on the human encounter with the divine as portrayed in this first and perhaps most influential of all books.”

Hope—Is It Warranted at This Point?

Hope—Is It Warranted at This Point?

“The past generation of American life, on Hunter’s account, has been one of intensifying ‘exhaustion’ and distrust, as the sources of pluralism have multiplied, and the endlessly ‘worked-through’ soil of the hybrid-Enlightenment has come to seem dry and depleted, no longer able to provide plausible accounts of human nature and the meaning of history that a majority of Americans can sign onto.”

The Life of Joseph Epstein

The Life of Joseph Epstein

“This might have been a highly political book detailing the evolution of a conventional Cold War liberal into the conservative that he is regarded as being (even if he doesn’t label himself as such in these pages). It might have been, but it isn’t. No, this memoir was written simply because Epstein sees his life as ’emblematic of the times’ and secondly because he sees himself as having acquired the literary skill necessary to ‘recount that life well.'”

Order for a Disordered Time

Order for a Disordered Time

“When one thinks of order one might think of the phrase law and order. Kirk explains, however, that order is wider and larger than law.”

Order for a Disordered Time

Kirk’s Constitution: From the Roots to the End of American Order?

“The tragedy is that Kirk was correct: our Constitution was grounded in a deeper tradition, embodied in the people’s habits of thought and social practice, its religion, its historical common mind, its recognition of the importance and nature of order in the soul and, from it, order in the commonwealth. It is this tradition—this people—we have more than half lost. From this loss we have lost our public order, along with the Constitution that once supported it through good, legitimate law. “

The Book Gallery

A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.

Shop through Regnery
Support the Kirk Center
& University Bookman