How Do You Do It?

By Gerald Russello | Edited by David G. Bonagura, Jr.

“How do you do it?” This question was asked often of Gerald Russello. Husband and father, attorney and professor of law, editor, writer, and reviewer, institutional advisor and board member, friend of many, Gerald’s loves and labors were nothing short of prodigious. 

This volume presents Gerald’s pre­eminent writings. Part I offers glimpses of the man himself, a man of community and of faith. Part II presents his work on Russell Kirk and conservatism as a disposition of the soul to preserve life’s permanent things. Part III is a thematic history of the conservative movement, from Edmund Burke to Roger Scruton. Part IV considers humanist heroes like Christopher Dawson, Orestes Brownson, and Jacques Barzun. Part V articulates “The Catholic Thing,” the ways Catholics bring the teachings of Christ into the particulars of daily life. Part VI showcases Gerald’s legal acumen and scholarship. Parts VII and VIII treat the ancient classics and the American founding. Part IX considers the culture in light of Gerald’s conviction that “Beauty will save the world, not govern it.” 

How Gerald Russello did what he did is a mystery known only to God. Why he did what he did, however, is no such mystery. In the words of David G. Bonagura, Jr., his friend and editor, Gerald “did not write for immortality nor for fame; he wrote for love. In this, we are right to remember and esteem him, for he has communicated life’s greatest mystery to us through his pen.”

Gerald J. Russello (1971–2021) was the longtime editor of The University Bookman and fellow at the Chesterton Institute. He was the author of The Postmodern Imagination of Russell Kirk and the editor of Christianity and European Culture: Selections from the Work of Christopher Dawson. A practicing attorney, he regularly reviewed books and wrote essays on religion, culture, conservatism, law, and the humanities. 

David G. Bonagura, Jr., is an adjunct professor of classical languages at St. Joseph’s Seminary, New York, an adjunct professor of theology at Catholic International University, and the religion editor of The University Bookman. Author of two books, Steadfast in Faith and Staying with the Church, he is also the translator of Jerome’s Tears: Letters to Friends in Mourning.

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Paperback: 460pp.

ISBN: 978-1685953652