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.
A Fellow of Infinite Jest
“…Peter K. Andersson provides a well-researched and thorough explanation of a man who only appeared to historians as a marginal figure, but who was a seemingly important member of Henry VIII and his children’s social milieu.”
Buckley at 100: The Redhunter, William F. Buckley, Jr.
“[The book] was intended not to confirm all of McCarthy’s accusations or to overlook his failings but instead to attempt to set the record straight about the truths behind many of McCarthy’s allegations and to highlight the danger of ignoring the enemy within.”
Buckley at 100: Countering the Communist Threat
“…McCarthy raised a specific issue that American conservatives in the halcyon days of the modern movement could rally around–whether the U.S. State Department and its security program were corrupted by what Buckley and Bozell deemed the ‘criminal nonchalance’ of the department in its treatment of security and loyalty risks.”
Reason Reimagined: Ross Douthat’s Case for Belief
“…reality shows signs of intelligent design oriented to the good of human beings. Even more, the mind is uniquely capable of discovering that intelligent design. And miracles and supernatural experiences continue to occur in the modern world, even under the microscope of modern science.”
Evidence-based Answers for Life’s Great Mysteries
“…priest and philosopher Robert Spitzer tackles real questions from ordinary people about life and faith.”
Unmasking the Ideological Lie
“…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
“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
“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
“…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.’”
The Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.
