The University Bookman
Reviewing Books that Build Culture
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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.
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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
Nihilism as Public Policy
“The difference between nihilism as a private response to life’s contingencies and its sinister manifestation as public policy, Houellebecq aptly points out, is that the latter demands that nihilism become institutionalized.”
Paul Johnson (1937-2023): A Valediction
M. D. Aeschliman remembers the British historian Paul Johnson.
Apocalyptic Hope?
“…Hart teases out the distinction between tradition and traditionalism in a book that is thought-provoking and rewarding even where one disagrees with him.”
In Dialogue, We Dwell
“…political sentiment in America has atrophied to ‘factionalism,’ or precisely that against which James Madison warned in Federalist No. 10…”
Shakespeare and the Real
“…Shakespeare has indeed become, like the body of Patroclus, the center of one of the most violent skirmishes in the larger battle that rages over the gargantuan remains of the West.”
Can We Trust the Gospels?
“…McGrew contends not only that there is strong external evidence for the God of the New Testament… but that there is also good internal evidence—the information conveyed in the biblical accounts corresponds to what we know about the way truthful people talk and write.”
Betting on Catastrophe
“…who better than The New Criterion’s bench of deep thinkers to mull over James Burnham’s hypothesis—’Suicide is probably more frequent than murder as the end phase of a civilization’—with respect to Christendom’s funereal prospects.”
Here Comes Everybody: A New Survey of American Catholicism
“…historian Christopher Shannon… attemts[s] to tell the story of Catholic life in North America over the last five centuries in little more than five hundred pages.”
The War for the Second Age
“At its core… Sibley’s volume is the story of a Fall, and as such gives readers unparalleled insight into the moral underpinnings of Tolkien’s world.”
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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