The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Watch James Panero of the New Criterion discuss “The Urbanity of Russell Kirk” at the 2025 Gerald Russello Memorial Lecture.

The Urbanity of Russell Kirk

“The urban fabric must also be mended and darned through continuous upkeep. The city is not yours to experiment. From Russell to Russello, our ancestral spirits cast their shadows whether or not we choose to observe the city of god in the cities of men.”

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

“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

“…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.”

The Truth About Fusionism’s Founder

The Truth About Fusionism’s Founder

“…is an impressively investigated and superbly written biography. The incredible narrative is told chronologically in thirty-six chapters enriched by an incredible warehouse discovery that ‘unleashed amazing stories’ and ‘rescued a mislaid, vibrant history’ about a formidable eccentric at the front of a dynamic twentieth-century movement. As unlikely as Meyer’s life was, it is also unlikely that another biography will top Flynn’s splendid portrayal of the cultural warrior who journeyed with supreme optimism to the side he thought could and would win.”

A Fellow of Infinite Jest

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.

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: The Redhunter, William F. Buckley, Jr.

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 

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.”

Unmasking the Ideological Lie

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

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

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.”

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.

@EvieSolheim By the way, the @KirkCenter takes literature, ethics, character formation, & cultural renewal seriously

Encourage you to participate in our @ubookman academic journal & the fellowship of our literary & academic community, enshrining what Dr. Kirk calls “the Moral Imagination”

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