The University Bookman
Reviewing Books that Build Culture
Support the University Bookman during our annual Kirktober Fundraiser, and receive an audio copy of Kirk’s short story, What Shadows We Pursue.
Kirktober 2025: James Panero and Adam Simon on the Haunted House
October 28, 2025
On Tuesday, October 28, at 6:00 PM, you are invited to join University Bookman editor Luke Sheahan, Hollywood screenwriter Adam Simon, and New Criterion executive editor James Panero, as they explore the theme of the haunted house in gothic literature and its relationship to conservative thought and imagination.
Register for this free webinar here.
William F. Buckley’s Cold War
“The conservative’s vocation is to remind the world that the soul was made for eternity, not bondage in barbed wire. We have the examples of great statesmen, writers, and thinkers to inspire our efforts at defending a humane freedom. The example of Buckley’s life and work, which truly culminated in our last true victory over totalitarianism, is one of the best conservatives could look towards now.”
Climate Realism in an Alarmed Age
“Their authors highlight what is known, unknown, and potentially unknowable in explaining the role of the sun, oceans and ocean currents, and clouds… We also learn of unintended consequences, neglected variables, variables that resist quantification, and a remarkable tendency toward reductionist thinking on all sides of the debate.”
Bring Back the Virtues, Medieval Style
“What does it mean to be made whole in a world that is deeply broken…? This begins with a humbling awareness not only of the virtues that we may realize we lack but also of vices in which, alas, we may abound. And so, Hamman pairs in each chapter a vice and a virtue that counteracts it along with beautiful and sometimes unexpected (to our modern imagination) images of these virtues and vices in Medieval literature and art.”
Is Religion Becoming Obsolete?
“It’s obvious that the meaning, function, and practice of religion is changing in the United States. But how exactly? And what does this change mean for the future of traditional forms of religion?”
Still Having Trouble with Gender
“…Byrne seeks to correct the dominant academic foolishness by clearing away the intellectual weeds that have overgrown the topics of sex and gender. He largely succeeds, but he then provides little guidance as to how we should live with sex and gender.”
Eric Voegelin’s Later Thought
“Drawing on Aristotle and Aquinas, Voegelin diagnosed the ideologue’s mind as one that wishes to objectify the world rather than live in a state of participatory reality with the divine. Conversation with ideologues becomes impossible because they perceive reality as something to dominate and manipulate rather than to understand and comprehend.”
Mark Twain Revisited
“An undisguised cosmopolitan who never wanted to forget his boyhood in the American heartland, Mark Twain was a walking—and strolling—contradiction.”
Restocking Conservatives’ Bookshelves
“A distinct thread connecting these novels is the conscious reflection within them on the importance of reading in forming a healthy and virtuous imagination.”
Educational Counterrevolution
“The central thesis of the book is that the Western Christian paideia that made the American experiment in liberty and self-government possible has nearly been stamped out of the public schools.”
The Book Gallery
A collection of conversations with Bookman editor Luke C. Sheahan and writers and authors of imagination and erudition.
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