The University Bookman
Reviewing Books that Build Culture
Join Kirktober and help support the mission of the University Bookman
Each week the Bookman brings you fresh reviews of the books that build culture, and essays that enliven the Permanent Things. Last year nearly 90,000 visitors engaged with the Bookman’s reviews, all free of charge and with no advertising to disrupt the reading experience. Our writers are touching hearts and minds across the globe with their reviews, bringing wisdom, creativity, and beauty to bear on the most important conversations happening in literature and culture.
Would you consider a gift to help us continue this work?
If just 1 in 4 of our readers contributed $10, we’d dramatically increase our capacity to recruit the brightest young writers and tackle more books and topics, all with a Kirkian angle. We’ve set a goal of raising $20k this month in order to continue our mission. Exceeding this amount will allow us to expand our work even more.
If you love the Bookman, and read us with regularity, we’d greatly appreciate your generous support this month.
With gratitude,
Luke Sheahan, Ph.D., editor
The University Bookman
P.S. As a special thank you to all Bookman supporters this month, we’ll send you a link to an audio recording of Ex Tenebris, one of Kirk’s best ghostly short stories. We think you’ll really enjoy it.
Campaign Progress
Finding Faith in Fiction
“D’Amico implores us to take time to ‘sink into the wonder’ that our children feel for the big and small details in creation as they see God’s plan unfolding in the world. Parents and caretakers are responsible ‘to invite sacred interpretations of real-life experiences’ by pursuing natural moments of curiosity.”
The Liturgical Key to Tolkien
“…Reinhard makes a unique case that exploring Tolkien’s entire body of work through the lens of the Catholic liturgy as Tolkien experienced it turns up rich insights into both the man and the myths he wove.”
To Find Eyes to See
“Hren selects earnest classics that have stood the test of time—books that generations of readers have found edifying and moving. But also, in the introduction and conclusion alike, Hren returns to another key point of fiction: it doesn’t just help us see extraordinary truth, although it can. More important is that fiction gives us eyes to see the transcendence of ordinary lives, including our own.”
Rural America as It Really Is
“Harold Bell Wright, regardless of how literary tastemakers viewed him in the 1920s, is the central figure in the origin of Branson. Though denigrated by the Baldwins and H. L. Menckens of his day, Wright was one of the century’s best-selling novelists.”
The Poet Watches Birds
“Jennifer A. Hartenburg’s debut collection of poems… offers such a poetic practice of waking, attending, and caring. These are poems rich with the life of the world, flocking with birds and bees both literal and metaphorical, but also closely attentive to the quiddities of language and the motions of the soul.”
John Lukács: The Consciousness—and Conscience—of an Historian
“Rather, ‘history’ is an irreducibly human cognitive and moral activity that shapes identity, yields personal and collective meaning, and embodies how people understand their present and future. For Lukács, every person is a ‘historian’ because all human persons live with memories and interpretations of their past.”
Continually Revising History
“[The book] is a rich resource for Voegelin scholars to consult for their own academic and intellectual pursuits.”
G. K. Chesterton, Friend of Truth
“Each essay is well worth reading on its own, which should be the case whether you are a trained philosopher or something less—or more—than that.”
Toward an American Iliad
“As we approach our country’s 250th… Courage is needed, as is fidelity to the bond of ordered liberty that once spurred our forefathers to take up arms to secure the peace and safety we now enjoy.”
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.
Have you read Russell Kirk’s fiction? My dad used to joke that ppl thought there must be two different authors by the same name—one who wrote serious political tomes and the other who wrote supernatural fiction. Story offer below.
What is is like to visit the home of the traditional conservative movement in America?
@mich_enjoyer recently visited the Kirk Center in Mecosta and offers an immersive look at the grounds and ongoing programming of the @KirkCenter.
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