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.”

Christopher Dawson and Pluralism

“In particular, I want to examine three aspects of Dawson’s thought: his conclusion that cultures, especially Western culture, historically have been pluralist; his contention that a pluralism of cultures preserves a sphere of freedom from dominant modern ideologies that would eliminate that freedom; and finally, Dawson’s conviction that a pluralist world represents a new opportunity for evangelization.”

Trust and Hope as the Final Words

“Each poem is biblically rooted, but Kohler draws on extra-biblical sources and her own creative imagination to ponder what her characters may have been thinking during the pivotal moments of their mostly undocumented lives. The result is a beautiful exploration into the hearts and minds of the women of the Bible—both named and unnamed—that leaves readers feeling as though the women are imminently present, sharing their innermost thoughts and the overlooked aspects of their experiences.”

The Other Greek Woman

“Felson’s Penelope, who seems, in all probability, very close to Homer’s Penelope, is the faithful wife of Odysseus, but she is also the independent and flirtatious matriarch who rules over her household and teases the suitors, whom she views as her ‘geese.’”

Evidence-based Answers for Life’s Great Mysteries

by David Weinberger | Aug 3, 2025

“…priest and philosopher Robert Spitzer tackles real questions from ordinary people about life and faith.”

Unmasking the Ideological Lie

by Jeffrey Folks | Jul 27, 2025

“…Mahoney has taken on an ambitious task: a sweeping examination of the nature, history, and consequences of the ideology that permeates almost all of modern existence…”

A Measured Look at an Unsettling Ideology

by Daniel J. Fischer | Jul 27, 2025

“Kirsch could have limited himself to serving up red meat to readers weary of the excesses of radical students and professors breathing ‘theory and invective,’ but instead, he challenged himself by seriously wrestling with a real problem identified by the settler colonialists. The creation of settler-colonial countries really did displace huge numbers of natives. What does that do to the legitimacy of these countries?”

Stylist for the Ages

by Thomas Banks | Jul 27, 2025

“To estimate Chateaubriand with any justice, one should try to imagine what might have been the effect had Lord Byron not died prematurely of camp-fever at Missolonghi, but rather, having returned to and reconciled with his native country, adopted the political and religious principles of Burke, sat down in his life’s autumn to write an immortal autobiography, and anticipated the coming of the Oxford Movement with a series of energetic defenses of the twin causes of Tory Monarchism and the Established Church.”

Limits and the Good Life

by Gene Callahan | Jul 20, 2025

“…David McPherson has written an argument for the importance of ‘recognizing proper limits in human life.’ He focuses on the ‘limiting virtues’ of ‘humility, reverence, moderation, contentment, neighborliness, and loyalty.’”

We’re All Epicureans Now

by Kayla Bartsch | Jul 20, 2025

“…as Zubia argues convincingly, Hume’s political vision is not entirely modern but resurrects and reinforces ideas native to the ancient Epicurean framework of empirical skepticism. Hume’s vision of politics, mankind, and truth itself was deeply shaped by Epicureanism, which has, in turn, shaped the modern imagination.”

The Rise of the World Builders

by Trevor Shelley | Jul 13, 2025

“Maçães’s literal interpretation proposes that the ‘geo’ in ‘geopolitics’ takes on new, technological, meaning, insofar as the earth alone is no longer the surface or space of kinetic encounter; rather, ‘this new battlefield is synthetic or virtual’—comprising the realms of technology, energy, trade, and finance—and ‘the way to win is to reprogram the system, to step outside the game world.'”

The Martyrs Have Not Gone Away

by Rev. Anthony D. Andreassi | Jul 13, 2025

“Well-researched and carefully footnoted, this new study of contemporary Christian martyrdom quickly draws the reader in through the author’s crisp prose and compelling stories of real people whose extraordinary courage stands in stark contrast to a world increasingly reluctant to live—or die—for anything.”

Principle and Pragmatism in Law

by Cary Federman | Jul 13, 2025

“Mixing experience with ‘balancing’—the idea that judges must weigh the pros and cons of a legal problem by attributing to ideas or interests a value—Dershowitz puts forth a jurisprudence of prevention. He embraces Holmes’s idea that ‘prevention’ and not retribution—the idea of just deserts—is ‘to be the chief and only universal purpose of punishment.’”