The University Bookman

Reviewing Books that Build Culture

Join friends of the Bookman in New York City on December 8, 2025 for the Gerald Russello Memorial Lecture.

William F. Buckley Jr.: Literary Figure 

“…the American public intellectual might best be appreciated as a literary figure. Producing about 350,000 words for publication yearly at the peak of his career, Buckley was never at a loss for what to say or how to say it.”

Defending the Christian Faith

“In 100 Tough Questions For Catholics: Common Obstacles To Faith Today… David G. Bonagura, Jr. gives bite-sized answers to dozens of big questions about the faith.”

Robert Nisbet’s The Social Philosophers Revisited: Conservative Pluralism versus the Mania for Unity

“…Nisbet shows that freedom and nobility (or excellence) can only survive when civic and social pluralism allows authentic human individuality and real (as opposed to ideologically-induced) community ample room to flourish.”

The Social Philosophers: A Reading for the Present

“…in Nisbet’s reading, conflict fulfills a paradoxical function: it is, to a large extent, the experience of uprooting and rupture that most strongly awakens the need for community. In other words, the longing for community becomes more conscious and pressing where community has been lost or weakened.”

A Sociology of the Permanent Things: Nisbet’s Tocquevillian Philosophy

“The great crisis of our time, which Tocqueville prophesied and Nisbet diagnosed, is the collapse of those intermediary institutions that can resist the drift toward democratic despotism.”

Out of Many, One

Out of Many, One

“If we could summarize Fredriksen’s Ancient Christianities under one rubric it would be ‘context reveals content.’”

Editors’ Summer Reading

Editors’ Summer Reading

Spring is drawing to a close. Summer is upon us. That means it’s time for summer reading.  Luke C. Sheahan, Editor nce final grades are submitted, and I’ve rested, I begin my trek through a summer booklist. At the top is always Cormac McCarthy’s...

Reagan vs. the Air Traffic Controllers

Reagan vs. the Air Traffic Controllers

“The book traces President Reagan’s decision to fire the striking Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) workers… Busch argues throughout that the PATCO strike deserves much more attention than it has previously attracted.”

Reappraising Woodrow Wilson

Reappraising Woodrow Wilson

“…it is hardly a biography at all. If anything, it is a history of the painfully gradual process of finally securing the right to vote for American women.”

Lessons from Sparta

Lessons from Sparta

“…Sparta’s Third Attic War and its predecessors are philosophical meditations on such weighty issues as the rise and fall of civilizations and the fundamental motives of major players within these civilizations.”

Defending the Christian Faith

Defending the Christian Faith

“In 100 Tough Questions For Catholics: Common Obstacles To Faith Today… David G. Bonagura, Jr. gives bite-sized answers to dozens of big questions about the faith.”

Poet on a Volcano

Poet on a Volcano

Horace: Poet on a Volcano By Peter Stothard.  Yale University Press, 2025.  Hardcover. 288 pages. $28. Reviewed by Nadya Williams. nce upon a time, a middle-aged poet climbed up to the top of the Sicilian volcano Mount Etna. He gazed a while with...

Alasdair MacIntyre: Philosopher of the Ages

Alasdair MacIntyre: Philosopher of the Ages

Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue, 1913-1922 Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, Md.) 208 pp., $33.00 cloth, 2005 The Tasks of Philosophy: Selected Essays, Vol. 1 Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, U.K.) 244 pp., $70.00 cloth, 2006 Ethics and Politics: Selected...

The Book Gallery

A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.

Natural Law and the Need for Moral Clarity
@TheOptimisticC3 on Hopeful Realism: Evangelical Natural Law and Democratic Politics
By Jesse Covington, Bryan T. McGraw, and Micah Watson. @ivpacademic

Moral Realism Over and Against Contingent Pluralism
William H. Rooney on "Hopeful Realism: Evangelical Natural Law and Democratic Politics" by Jesse Covington, Bryan T. McGraw, and Micah Watson.
@ivpacademic

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