Luke C. Sheahan, Editor
Ah, summer. The sun is for shining as books are for reading. The new imprint Creed & Culture yields two of my summer titles: Patrick Deneen’s American Odyssey: What an Ancient Story Reveals about Our Divided Souls and Michael Lucchese’s edited collection of Russell Kirk essays, On America: How to Understand the Legacy of 1776, discussed by Darrell below. Luke Burgis’s The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion also makes the summer list. Reputedly, Burgis relies upon Robert Nisbet’s analysis of community. I look forward to seeing the subject of so much of my own research be applied to contemporary social problems. One of the most influential books on my own thinking about the founding (besides Kirk’s Roots of American Order, of course) is Barry Alan Shain’s The Myth of American Individualism: The Protestant Origins of American Political Thought. I will return to it later this month in preparation for an essay on the book’s implications.
It’s been a while since I’ve read some of the conservative classics. I’m rereading portions of Kirk’s The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, Redeeming the Time, and The Politics of Prudence, as well as a smattering of excerpts from Roger Scruton’s books on conservatism, in preparation for some seminars at Piety Hill.
It would hardly be summer if I didn’t make time for some light reading to break up the dense selections that often dominate my academic and editorial lists. As I’ve written before in this space, I’m a fan of thrillers, especially Jack Carr’s Terminal List series. I plan to read Carr’s Fourth Option this month. I’ve also returned to William F. Buckley’s Blackford Oakes novels, Tucker’s Last Stand and High Jinx, and even added a new author, Will Jordan, to my list. I’ve been enjoying his Ryan Drake series about a CIA paramilitary operative. All this makes for some exciting nighttime reading, perhaps paradoxically lulling me to sleep.
David G. Bonagura, Jr., Religion Editor
Two books, one dense and one simple, headline my summer reading docket. The former is St. Augustine’s The City of God, which I have been trudging through for nearly a year in fits and starts and at whose final books I now stare. The vigor of the great bishop’s arguments with all sorts of groups–not only pagans, but also Platonists, Epicureans, Manichees, and heretics of various stripes–is, in my opinion, the most surprising element of this much celebrated yet seldom read book. If you have not read it, noli timere: I have been marking off the sections most relevant for the twenty-first century and translating them fresh for an edition due out from Sophia Institute in January 2027. Then you can read a shortened version and still say that you finally read Augustine’s magnum opus.
The simple book is C.S. Lewis’s classic The Screwtape Letters. I read it once when I was an undergraduate and still developing my spiritual life, which is the part of us that Lewis seeks to move with his most clever tale. Now that I am firmly ensconced in middle age, I am eager to see how his spiritual insights resonate with me as I lead a reading group through it this July.
Darrell Falconburg, Humanities Editor
Much of my summer reading grows out of my work at the Russell Kirk Center and Faulkner University. This summer, for instance, I plan to read Howard Pyle’s The Story of King Arthur and His Knights. My own liking for Pyle was awakened after hearing Dr. David Deavel lead an excellent public seminar in Mecosta on Pyle’s stories and illustrations. Meanwhile, for a course I will teach this fall, I also plan to revisit selections from Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, as well as other books and authors on the syllabus.
With my first book project on Russell Kirk’s educational thought currently under review, I can now begin another project of interest: a study of Flannery O’Connor. As a result, I have been returning to O’Connor’s The Complete Stories, and I expect to keep reading them throughout the summer. I have also been spending time with the scholarship on O’Connor, including Ann Hartle’s recently published Flannery O’Connor and Blaise Pascal: Recovering the Incarnation for the Modern Mind (CUA Press, 2025). As part of this project, I hope to read or re-read certain books by the mid-century Christian humanists whom O’Connor admired. This includes Jacques Maritain’s Art and Scholasticism and Christopher Dawson’s Progress and Religion, which I began this winter but did not finish. And on a completely different note, I can’t wait to read a physical copy of Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, once it arrives in the mail.
To celebrate America’s 250th birthday, I plan to read the new Russell Kirk volume, On America: How to Understand the Legacy of 1776. Readers of The University Bookman will be especially interested in this new collection, which brings together both classic and previously unpublished writings by the founding editor of this journal.
Isabel Dobbs, Managing Editor
This summer, I hope to read Henry Adams’s novel Democracy: An American Novel. Written in 1880, it tells the story of a young widow who moves to Washington, D.C. and encounters political intrigue and corruption (and maybe romance). It purports to describe the realities of American government then, and maybe now. The book has an exciting history of its own. It was published anonymously, and its author was revealed to be Henry Adams only after Adams’s death.
I am spending most of July visiting extended family, and have benefited from the reading recommendations of my relatives. My aunt recently returned from a conference at which she learned about a book published by Cluny Media. She shared this book with me. The Heart of Culture, A Brief History of Western Education explores the history and purpose of education throughout history, from Plato to Newman. It includes chapters on Monasticism, the Medieval university, and the Enlightenment. It sounds like an ambitious project, but the book is less than 150 pages and was created to be used in courses at the University of St. Thomas.
Along with Darrell and Luke, I plan to read Michael Lucchese’s new edited volume, On America: How to Understand the Legacy of 1776, to celebrate America’s semiquincentennial. A collection of Russell Kirk essays published this year, it includes reflections on America’s founding and statesmen. I am looking forward to the final section on American letters, which has essays on Hawthorne and Henry Adams.
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