The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

John Adams: Russell Kirk’s Founding Federalist

“…[Kirk] located the mainstream of the American Founding not with the Jeffersonian Republicans, but with their rivals in the Federalist party. Kirk admired them not only as practical statesmen, but also as anti-revolutionary thinkers in their own right. As he put it, the Constitution they supported was both ‘the most successful conservative device in the history of the world’ and a ‘great monument’ to the Federalists.”

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.

“To Think Faith” as Educators

“…faith and pedagogy should be in harmony. Smith’s guide is not a theory of faith and teaching or how to sprinkle faith within teaching. ‘It offers repeated practice at noticing and thinking through ways in which faith and the process of teaching might connect in everyday practice,’ in the mundane moments of elementary, secondary, or higher education classrooms.”

Every Educational Bureaucracy is Unhappy in Its Own Way

“In the end, Nikias’s story illustrates a recurring truth about bureaucracies: reformers often find themselves defeated not by external enemies but by the accumulated habits, incentives, and procedures of the organizations they serve.”

The Problems of American Higher Education

“In the spirit of Kirk, the conservative reformer must remember the imperfectability of human nature, a moral truth that the modern academy has forgotten.”

Help Me Read the Word

Help Me Read the Word

“Womack introduces important concepts and provides helpful tools to her fellow Bible Nerds to discover the richness of the Word. She also effectively details the different genres of Scripture. These concepts, tools, and details are woven together with personal anecdotes that make the text easily relatable. The author’s love of Scripture shines through, and it can only help anyone honestly pursuing the truth of God’s Word.”

The Long Decline of Liberalism

The Long Decline of Liberalism

“Pilkington describes the many societal ills that this destruction of hierarchies entailed… While Pilkington’s diagnosis of liberalism as the source of these diseases seems sound, his confidence that global liberalism is collapsing rapidly and that the immediate future will be ‘post-liberal’ leaves me uneasy. Even if we grant that liberalism is an inherently unstable way of organizing a polity, does that really allow us to predict just how rapidly that instability will lead to a downfall?”

The British Empire on Trial

The British Empire on Trial

“[Biggar’s] book amounts to a defense of the British Empire. He succeeds at giving the reader ample reasons not to hate his home country, but also misses an opportunity to use his unique training to pioneer a more innovative form of history.”

Ulyssean Interrogations at Dusk, or Slowing Down at 65

Ulyssean Interrogations at Dusk, or Slowing Down at 65

“Odysseus himself was offered immortality by the nymph Calypso—and refused it. He chose instead to return to his wife Penelope, a mortal woman who would age. He chose to return to a finite life marked by loss, memory, and longing; and in that choice, I have always thought, lies his greatest courage—and his deepest wisdom… I hope and I believe that I would have made the same Ulyssean decision.”

Smithian Wisdom on Demand

Smithian Wisdom on Demand

“Even readers who disagree with the collection’s broad normative valence will find that it consistently models a way of reading Smith as a unified thinker about persons-in-society—morally formed agents embedded in evolving rules, conventions, and institutions.”

In Praise of Poetry and Form

In Praise of Poetry and Form

“Majmudar often takes the long view, and from the long view, free verse is a new arrival in a variegated poetic history that stretches back into prehistory. To embrace it alone is to cut oneself off from that sweeping history and from the resources to be found there. There is still vitality in these neglected traditions. They are not a dead past.”

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.

Kirk saw poetry, fiction, tradition, and restraint as essential to understanding America and preserving its character. In his review of "On America," @cjscalia explores Kirk’s vision of the founding, statesmanship, literature, and the enduring ideas that have shaped the republic.

The Audacious Russell Kirk
Bruce P. Frohnen reviews "On America: How to Understand the Legacy of 1776" by Russell Kirk. Edited by Michael Lucchese.

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