The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

What the American Revolution Secured: Order, Justice, and Freedom

Throughout the semiquincentennial year celebrating America’s independence, The University Bookman will invite a range of writers and speakers to contribute to a series drawing upon Russell Kirk’s work on the American Revolution and the constitutional order it secured.

Who Are the Enemies of Academic Freedom?

“…the authors’ efforts to defend free speech and academic freedom ultimately fall flat. This is because, for all their handwringing about the red-state barbarians at the gates, Chemerinsky and Gillman cannot or will not see what their own argument and their own evidence of student, faculty, and administrator behavior show to even a mildly attentive reader: The greatest enemies of higher learning in America remain within the walls.”

Who’s the Furious One? 

“One also comes away from this book with the sense that her allegedly fit-to-be-tied subjects have had no legitimate reason to be concerned or troubled, much less furious, about anything at all in the American body politic. The reigning orthodoxy of liberal pluralism, however that has been packaged and repackaged, apparently had been—and deserves to continue to be—the prevailing story of life in America before, during, and well after what she hopes will soon prove to be little more than a briefly successful outburst on the part of the MAGA right.”

A New Introduction to the Austrian School

“After discussing Menger, the authors go on to present the ideas of subsequent major figures in the history of the Austrian school, including Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Friedrich von Wieser, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Israel Kirzner, and Murray Rothbard.”

Monster is the Machine

Monster is the Machine

“Few outside of Tolkien’s most dedicated students, however, were aware that he had written an entire satirical story against the automobile… [It] is (or rather was) the last significant piece of original Tolkien fiction to remain unpublished.”

After the New Left: Rereading Breaking Ranks

After the New Left: Rereading Breaking Ranks

“The recent death of Norman Podhoretz prompted me to return to his ‘political memoir…’ Published in 1979, it deserves to be read or re-read today—and not simply as a historical account of his evolution from left to right during the 1960s and 1970s.”

Amici

Amici

“…art historian William E. Wallace chronicles the rivalry and friendship of Michelangelo and Titian, noting that the two Italian geniuses were not as variant in outlook and craft as is popularly believed.”

Catholic or Nothing

Catholic or Nothing

“Her accounts inspire reflection on the allure of Roman Catholicism to noteworthy nineteenth and twentieth century thinkers, specifically its stress on authority, tradition, and dogma, its aesthetics (especially liturgical), and its forceful critique of predominant secularist ideologies and systems. However different these converts were, then, they all found countercultural Roman Catholicism a compelling counterstatement to their epoch’s regnant religious and social norms.”

No Seed Which Dies Remains Alone

No Seed Which Dies Remains Alone

“For all the weight that Christianity and its paradoxes pull in the Western poetic tradition, you’d think that the theme of death and new life would be a rather tired one. And perhaps it is, at least in the work of more amateur poets than Pastor. But Pastor shows that the great paradox of the empty tomb is, in truth, an indefatigable one…”

Words from the Hearth

Words from the Hearth

“Each poem maps a path on the journey by sharing the personal and religious experiences of a young woman falling in love, getting married, and then expecting and welcoming children. As a reader who tends to prefer prose to poetry, I appreciate the narrative arc as well as the opportunity to reminisce, through Reardon’s work, on my own similar experiences. Reardon’s writing is intensely religious, elevating the seemingly mundane aspects of home life to a spiritual level. Because it draws such powerful connections, it invites readers to ponder how even the simplest details of their lives can lead to the divine.”

A Knight of the American West

A Knight of the American West

“His new book is an exciting chivalric adventure and romance, while also being a contemporary American novel set in the Southwest USA. Exceptionally well written, its straightforward crafting is an encouragement to the reader who eagerly returns to its pages.”

Coming to Terms with Sherman

Coming to Terms with Sherman

“…Glenn Arbery has contemporary America down cold, the more so since the cultural variations between North and South are far from being as marked as they were even fifty years ago.”

Solzhenitsyn and the Spirituality of Self-Limitation

Solzhenitsyn and the Spirituality of Self-Limitation

“…any so-called ‘progress’ or advancement of society must begin, always and everywhere, in the soul of the individual—not in the revolutionary fantasies of radical social reformers, whose aims work to dissolve the spiritual bonds that underlie the traditional fabric of human communities.”

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.

Who Are the Enemies of Academic Freedom?
Justin D. Garrison on "Campus Speech and Academic Freedom: A Guide for Difficult Times" by Erwin Chemerinsky and Howard Gillman.
@yalepress

Who’s the Furious One?
Chuck Chalberg on "Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right" by Laura K. Field. 
@PrincetonUPress

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