Product Description
Works of Chesterton in one large Kindle edition. Works include:

Father Brown:
The Innocence of Father Brown
The Wisdom of Father Brown

Novels:
The Ball and the Cross
The Barbarism of Berlin
The Club of Queer Trades
The Flying Inn
Magic
Manalive
The Man Who Was Thursday
The Napoleon of Notting Hill
The Trees of Pride

Non-Fiction:
Alarms and Discursions
Appreciations and Criticism
All Things Considered
The Appetite of Tyranny
The Crimes of England
The Defendant
Eugenics and Other Evils
Heretics
Irish Impressions
A Miscellany of Men
The New Jerusalem
Orthodoxy
A Short History of England
The Superstition of Divorce
Tremendous Trifles
Twelve Types
Utopia of Usurers
Varied Types
The Victorian Age in Literature
What I Sawin America
What's Wrong With the World

Biographies:
Lord Kitchener
Robert Browning
Robert Louis Stevenson
Shaw ... Read more

Product Description
Father Brown, one of the most quirkily genial and lovable characters to emerge from English detective fiction, first made his appearance in The Innocence of Father Brown in 1911. That first collection of stories established G.K. Chesterton's kindly cleric in the front rank of eccentric sleuths. This complete collection contains all the favourite Father Brown stories, showing a quiet wit and compassion that has endeared him to many, whilst solving his mysteries by a mixture of imagination and a sympathetic worldliness in a totally believable manner. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Chesterton Short Stories
The condition was as stated although the size of the book is smaller than I thought.Delivery was timely.I am certain to appreciate the reading of it.

Wordsworth Classics edition IS complete
Setting aside the person who mistook a complaint to the seller as a review and the reviews from the people who seem to be reviewing some other editions, I would like to assure buyers that The Wordsworth Classics Complete Father Brown Stories with the isbn number 9781853260032 is in fact the most complete collection on the market. Not only does it contain every single story from each of the individual collections, it also includes The Donnington Affair & Father Brown solves The Donnington Affair, a story never before included in any "complete" collection.

The merits of the stories have been well covered by other reviewers. This is being written solely as a corrective to inaccurate & misleading information.

Delightful reading for mystery and non-mystery fans alike
The Complete Father Brown Stories is a misnomer for the title of this book of mystery stories by G.K. Chesterton. The book actually contains only stories from the first two books in the series:The Innocence of Father Brown, andThe Wisdom of Father Brown.Stories from all four Father Brown mysteries (including The Incrudulity of Father Brown and The Secret of Father Brown) can be found in the Wordsworth Classics edition entitled Father Brown and apparantly not available through amazon.com. None of these titles has any particular significance beyond giving a different name to each set of stories. Be that as it may, The Complete Father Brown Stories does give a good sense of these mysteries.

Father Brown is much different from his more illustrious precedessor in British detective fiction, Sherlock Holmes. Brown is short, Holmes is tall, Brown is cherubic, Holmes is rod-thin. Brown is unassuming, Holmes is commanding. The tone of the stories themselves are different. The Father Brown mysteries are more light-hearted with a touch of humor, whereas Holmes is all seriousness.
But Father Brown and Holmes are alike in that they solve seemingly unsolvable crimes and difficult situations by throught processes rather than brute force. Father Brown ponders a case and suddenly has an "aha" moment and comes up with the solution.

The stories are in many ways more enjoyable than the Holmes mysteries. The first story, The Bule Cross, introduces the reader to Flambeau, a master thief turned detective, who shows up in many of the Father Brown stories. Flambeau bears some resemblance to Dr. Watson in that his skills are inferior to those of Father Brown, but he is treated more as an equal than is Dr. Watson. The Paradise of Thieves tells a marvelous tale in which things are never what they seem. The Honour of Israel Gow provides a unique definition of "honour."The Mistake of the Machine is a delightful tale in which there is no crime but shows that love can conquer all if one is clever enough.

All in all this book is delightful reading for mystery and non-mystery fans as well.

The Table of Contents online and the table of contents in the actual book are completely different.
This book was purchased based on the titles in the table of contents.However, this book is 277 pages and not the 800 pages it says.It is NOT the complete Father Brown Mysteries at all.A few of the stories like "The Flying Stars" and "The Absence of Mr.Glass" are not in this book. I am very disappointed since this was a Christmas gift.

Very refreshing examples of crime genre
The mystery story is exemplified by the Sherlock Holmes stories. Those who haven't read them will probably know much about them from the way they have (justly) been added to the public imagination. So a good way of describing the Father Brown stories is to compare the two, as the images of Holmes are probably known to all.

Holmes is a private detective. As such, his main objective is to solve the crime. Father Brown is (obviously) a Catholic priest. His objective is to serve God by trying to better society. These two goals say a lot about how they go about solving crimes. Unlike Holmes, Brown gets close to crimes by accident (yes, that's a big suspension-of-disbelief) - as they happen amongst the families and coworkers of friends. He does not seek to "catch" the crook for the police but rather to find out what happened. At times, he lets the criminal go - and unlike the grumpy Holmes his speech (full of philosophical discussions) and actions reek of a love of humanity.

Holmes solves by logical deduction. Brown solves by a combination of intiution and a deep insight into character and circumstance. As such, the crux of many of the stories is psychological. Others rely on assumptions that people make about, say, people subservient to them. The Brown stories are therefore great satires of the early 20th century London society.

This edition has 18 stories - a quite eclectic collection and very recommended if you haven't encountered Brown before. The first one (the Blue Cross) introduces him marvelously as one of the great detectives. ... Read more

Product Description
My DEAR CHARLES, I originally called this book" What is Wrong," and it would have satisfied your sardonic temper to note the number of social misunderstandings that arose from the use of the title. Many a mild lady visitor opened her eyes when I remarked casually, "I have been doing 'What is Wrong' all this morning." And one minister of religion moved quite sharply in his chair when I told him (as he understood it) that I had to run upstairs and do ,vhat was wrong, but should be down again in a minute. Exactly of ,vhat occult vice they silently accused me I cannot conjecture, but I knov of what I accuse myself; and that is, of having written a very shapeless and inadequate book, and one quite unworthy to be dedicated to you. As far as literature goes, this book is what is wrong, and no mistake. I t may seem a refinement of insoience to present so ,vild a composition to one who has recorded two or three of the really impressive visions of the moving million

Table of Contents

PART I-THE HOMELESSNESS OF MAN; 1 The Medical Mistake; 2 Wanted, An Unpractical Man ; 3 The New Hypocrite; 4 The Fear of the Past; 5 The Unfinished Temple; 6 The Enemies of Property; 7 The Free Family; 8 The Wildness of Domesticity ; 9 History of Hudge and Gudge ; 10 Oppression by Optimism ; 11 The Homelessness of Jones; 3; 8; 16; 24; 36; 44; 49; 55; 61; 68; 73; PART II -IMPERIALISM: OR THE MISTAKE; ABOUT MAN; 1 The Charm of Jingoism ; 2 Wisdom and the Weather; 3 The Common Vision; 4 The Insane Necessity; 81; 86; 95; 101; PART III - FEMINISM: OR THE MISTAKE; ABOUT WOMAN; 1 The Unmilitary Suffragette; 2 The Universal Stick ; 3 The Emancipation of Domesticity; 4 The Romance of Thrift; 5 The Coldness of Chloe; 6 The Pedant and the Savage; 7 The Modern Surrender of Woman ; 8 The Brand of the Fleur de L ys; Vll; 113; 117; 126; 135; · 143; · 149; · 154; · 158; Contents; PART III (co1Zti11tted)-; 9 Sincerity and the Gallows; 10 The Higher Anarchy ... Read more

Product Description
In WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE WORLD author G. K. Chesterton rightly points out that what people see as "wrong with the world" are only the symptoms of a deeper problem. He shows that our governments, be they capitalistic or socialistic, also fail to see the deeper problem. With a keen wit and lively prose, WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE WORLD cuts directly to the true problems that society must deal with and his solutions feel utterly correct. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

Socialism and Capitalism the same?...
It's amazing to read a book written so long ago that is so applicable today; probably more so in the U.S. than in any other modern country.Chesterton brings clarity to yet another topic, as is his MO for most of his writings.He even makes a compelling suggestion that the liberals and the conservatives are in cahootz to keep the lower classes oppressed for their own benefit.It is difficult to summarize the wealth of insight this book brings in such a short review.If you enjoy exploring sociological issues with an eye to morality (as it should always be done), then you will enjoy this book.I very nearly gave this one five stars, but decided on four stars due to my enjoyment of it relative to other Chesterton writings.Compared with most other authors, it would be five stars, hands down.

One final thing I want to mention is what an amazing summation Chesterton provides at the end of this book.In his typical style, he brings the issue into sharp perspective and out of the realm of theory and experimentation.The final sentences in this book constitute one of the best conclusions of any book I have ever read.Bravo, Mr. Chesterton.

Written in 1910, applies to 2009
G.K. Chesterton's "What's Wrong With the World" is not a bit of light reading. There are heady thoughts throughout and the reader is invited to do some of the heavy lifting as well. I don't agree with all of Chesterton's conclusions either but he does have a wonderful way with words. Have you ever had an argument with someone in which you thoroughly disagreed with some of their points but admired the way they laid them out and their turns of the phrase? That is my experience with G.K. Chesterton in a nutshell.

I only picked up this volume because I read somewhere that C.S. Lewis was a devoted fan of Chesterton.

Be prepared, there is no one thing that is wrong with the world - it is a collection of things. Of course, any thinking person knows that there are always a collection of problems that are inter-related and cause all sorts of things to be wrong in the world.

Chesterton is strongly pro-Catholic church so be prepared that one of the things wrong with the world is that the world is not Catholic. Being a Lutheran myself, I smiled and moved on. Women working outside of the home is a problem Chesterton identifies as well. Not because women are inferior (he reveres the housewife and acknowledges it is draining) but because the home is a special place if well-tended by an extraordinary women - a place where the family can actually be free of the demands of society and work. Plus, a homemaker is, by the very nature of the job, a skilled amateur that knows a little about "a hundred trades." Homemakers are not specialized and that is good in Chesterton's eyes.

Why is specialization a problem? People become experts in just one thing and don't learn about the rest of the world. Think of our modern college system. Someone can get an MBA in business but never have taken an art class. Doctorates of art in all likelihood have never taken an econ class. Are those people well educated?

Probably his biggest thing that is wrong with the world is its habit of "altering the human soul to fit its conditions, instead of altering human conditions to fit the human soul." In other words, we conform to the arbitrary demands of society rather than making sure that society conforms to the needs of the human soul.

Tired of the "Think of the Children" mantra? So was Chesterton 100 years ago: "There has arisen...a foolish and wicked try typical of the confusion. I mean the cry, "Save the children." It is, of course, part of that modern morbidity that insists on treating the state (which is the home of man) as a sort of desperate expedient in time of panic. This terrified opportunism is also the origin of the Socialist and other schemes."

Chesterton also has several comments on education that to this 20 year veteran teacher sound grumpy, fuddy-duddy and exactly 100% right.

It's Chesterton
This is one of my favorite books by Chesterton. He relates the dangers of Big Business and Big Government. The amazing thing is the way the Big Business argument has withstood the test of time.
Most importantly it is Chesterton, get it, enjoy it, love it.

Beyond my comprehension
Chesterton was undoubtably a genius. I am certain that this book has great value and meaning but I found it beyond my ability to dig it out.The language is full of idoms and references from late nineteenth and early twentieth century England which I could not comprehend without tremendous effort.I gave up on it.I suppose this is more of a reflexion of myself than Chesterton.

This Should Be The First Chesterton Book You Read
At least as far as the ones I have read (several).

Chesterton's short essays in this book can be read almost independently with much satisfaction.The world has changed a bit since the early 1900's but it is astonishing how prescient this work truly is. It might be hard for modern readers to realize how different the current issues of poverty are from those of his day and the forces that contribute to it are focused in different areas, but the fundamental analysis is impeccable.

What Chesterton does beyond all comparison is foundational thinking.His wit and paradoxical prose force the reader to consider problems from an entirely different perspective.In this sense Chesterton truly is a revolutionary conservative.When he asks if it is possible to "set back the clock" we suddenly discover that he is dead serious and that it is a very desirable thing to do.

All in all, this is a non-religious book and a good introduction to Chesterton's work.He keeps the sermons to an absolute minimum and makes an awful lot of sense. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Product Description
Dale Ahlquist, the President of the American Chesterton Society, and author of G. K Chesterton -The Apostle of Common Sense, presents a book of wonderfulinsights onhow to "look at the whole world through the eyes of Chesterton". Since, as he says, "Chesterton wrote about everything", there is an ocean of his material to benefit from GKC's insights on a kaleidoscope of many important topics. Chesterton wrote a hundred books on a variety of themes, thousands of essays for London newspapers, penned epic poetry, delighted in detective fiction, drew illustrations, and made everyone laugh by his keen humor. Everyone who knew Chesterton loved him, even those he debated with. His unique writing style that combines philosophy, spirituality, history, humor, and paradox have made him one of the most widely read authors of modern times. As Ahlquist shows in his engaging volume, this most quoted writer of the 20th century has much to share with us on topics covering politics, art, education, wonder, marriage, fads, poetry, faith, charity and much more. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (19)

Wonderful, thoughtful read
This is a wonderful introduction to a very thoughtful and amazing man.Ahlquist takes Chesterton's timeless truths and applies them to life today.If you are looking for something completely written by Chesterton, this is probably not the book as Ahlquist's words definitely fill more pages than Chesterton's.If you are looking for a book with a bit of background on Chesterton, this is the book for you.Again, it is a fabulous introduction to a remarkable man.

A big disappointment
This book started out well, with Dale Ahlquist doing the expected thing: presenting the thoughts of G. K. Chesterton and illustrating these thoughts with good quotations from G. K. Chesterton.

Somewhere around page 100, though, I realized that Dale Ahlquist had taken over the book!What I now found myself reading was "the rants of Dale Ahlquist" as sporadically supported by cherry-picked citations from G. K. Chesterton.This was especially evident during the chapter on "Feminism."Since Feminism (as opposed to the more general Women's Rights Movements) only came into existence decades after Chesterton's death, he very naturally had nothing to say about it.

I was so dismayed by this development that I threw the book away.In any case, Chesterton is not one of those authors who needs an introduction: pick up any of his books and you'll get to know him right away.

An excellent read
Common Sense 101: Lessons from G.K. Chesterton
If you do not ask the questions, you cannot get the answers. Chesterton was passionately concerned about the mystery of life and death, good and evil and all the issues that faced the society of his day. In short he was involved. In his search for answers, nothing escaped his interest and his voluminous writings on every topic under the sun defy one's imagination.
Like Chesterton, Dale Ahlquist is a convert and unashamedly wants to show the relevance of Chesterton's wisdom as we try to grapple with the realities of today.
As Dale Ahlquist said in an interview, on publishing this book in 2006, he tried to portray the world through Chesterton's eyes and hoped to give people a new and fresh and, I must admit, refreshing perspective.
Dale Ahlquist has an unbelievable knowledge of his hero's life and writings. Dale writes with eloquence and easy readability.
As most of the other reviewers have already written, this book is an excellent and quotable read.
It reinforces one's interest in Chesterton and is an ideal gift for those who would like to have a challenging and entertaining experience.

Too much Ahlquist, not enought Chesterton
I wanted to read some Chesterton after working my way through CS Lewis (I had some old paperbacks on my shelves which I'd been meaning to read for years).I mistakenly ordered this one, which is an introduction to the man, rather than selected writings.My mistake - but in retrospect a reasonable first step.

Catch is, the editor (Dale Ahlquist) does two things which I find irritating.Firstly, he gets in the way.I want to know more about Chesterton, instead I read Ahlquist.He quotes from Chesterton but often extrapolates Chesterton's sayings and thoughts without cross-reference.Example: in a section on history, Ahlquist cited the two world wars of the 20th century as being a carry-over from the split between the Catholic church and the Protestant ones.Sounds like nonsense to me, and I didn't see any Chesterton reference to back it up.(Chesterton is, no doubt, also capable of error but I'd expect his to be worth reading).

Secondly Ahlquist somehow always wraps every subject up in a defence on Catholicism.I'm not a catholic; I suspect Chesterton has comments I can still read and understand, and enjoy.Ahlquist hides them, taints them.It's like reading a recipe book and finding every one involves ACME tomatoes.Nothing wrong with ACME tomatoes, just put the sponsor on the cover.

So - Chesterton isn't well served.Buy a selected Chesterton instead.I'm sure the Chesterton is worth it - anyone recommended by CS Lewis is worth it.This book is more for how Chesterton's writings connect to Catholicism.Or for fans of Dale Ahlquist.

Awesome!
This book is well-written. The author provides an excellent environment for getting to know G.K. Chesterton and his perspectives on life and faith. This is not fluff reading. It is obvious to me that the author has a deep appreciation and respect for G.K. Chesterton. Previous reviews of this book are accurate. This is my first effort to learn about G.K. Chesterton and I am glad I chose this book. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (6)

A Different Look at Chesterton
I have read some of G.K. Chesterton's fiction and religious non-fiction but had never read any of his newspaper articles. These reflections cover a variety of topics -- mostly light. I enjoyed them for his opinions, style, and the fact that they are short stories that can be read when just a few minutes are available. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to see another side of Chesterton's interests and writing skills.

Classic Chesterton
This is a compilation of essays written for his newspaper column. I am always impressed by his poetic and detailed descriptions of the world around him. He covers a variety of subjects and always turns the observations about life into truths that I did not expect. Among my favorites: A Piece of Chalk--where a drawing exercise turns into a lesson on the nature of truth, The Dragon's Grandmother--on why we should read fairy tales to our children, and Twelve Men--the best explanation I have read on why we have juries made of our peers and not professional jurors.

G.K. Lite
Anyone new to Mr. Chesterson's writings will find this book fun and entertaining. It will give you a glimpse into the genius of Chesterton's brilliant mind. Then you must move on to the more meaty, weighty, substantive philosophic works: Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man.

Wonderful writing makes for wonderful reading
If you're a fan of great writing, you'll be a fan of this collection.Each story within the collection is short, maximum 4 pages, and they get right to the point.However, like any great story, they save the best for last and you will find yourself looking forward to reading the last paragraph within each story as it is truly the best and most invigorating.Chesterton's control of the English language is stunning and his direct matter of proving a thing is awe-inspiring.If you're a fan of his other works, you may like this one even more because it doesn't take as long to get the same great Chesterton-messages out of the reading.I give this book 5 stars because it really is wonderful when you don't have all day to read, yet still want to learn something or be motivated that the world is not all bad throughout the day.If you've got 15 spare minutes, thats enough to flip through one of these stories and feel better about yourself and the world.

A Century of Wonders
2009 marks the hundredth anniversary of this book from 1909, which is a collection of columns the author penned for a British newspaper, the Daily Mail. As such it's a mixed bag; some of the writing is, in my view a 3, and some a 5, thus my rating of a 4. Sometimes I don't know what he's talking about. Other times I find myself quoting a paragraph in an e-mail. This book contains my first encounter with Chesterton, a brief essay called "On Lying in Bed", which I still think one of his best. But when I began this book, although I avidly devour G.K.'s novels, and some of his nonfiction, like Orthodoxy, this one didn't hold me.

I returned to it now and then, as one does, after reading rather more gripping reads. Then its magic kicked in, and in my view, some of the later essays, particularly those that are travelogues, are the best. Other readers will have their favorites; some of mine are:" The advantages of Having One Leg"; "The Twelve Men"; "The Wind and the Trees"; "In Topsy-Turvy Land"; "The Tower"; "The Orthodox Barber"; "Humanity: An Interlude"; "The Little Birds Who Won't Sing"; "The Travellers in State"; "The Prehistoric Railway Station"; "A Glimpse of My Country"; and "The Ballade of a Strange Town".

That's my dozen keepers from these 39 essays, a rather good haul from a book a century old. The difficulty in this volume is that the references, as in most newspaper columns, are to current controversies, culture, and even jokes of the day. The reason this book celebrates a centennial when so many others of the era are forgotten, is because for Chesterton, those passing fancies, all the rage at the moment, are signposts to conditions common to humanity. That's why he remains so quotable. But neither did he write vaguely about universals; he observed and commented on particular people and places in his time. That's why he remains readable.

Few read the sort of column collected here in our day, and fewer now write it. What one notices on reading any Chesterton, however, on dipping into any book almost anywhere, is his delight in living, and looking, and reuminating. This is not a self-help book, but any reader who helps him or herself to it, may be helped regardless, to see more, and enjoy life more. Because his message at bottom is it's OK to enjoy life, to see it as a good gift, to be thankful and revel in it. This is not the frantic optimism of a prescriptive self-help book. To Chesterton, it's simple realism. As he writes in "The Ballade of a Strange Town":

"The false optimism, the modern happiness, tires us because it tells us we fit into this world. The true happiness is that we don't fit. We come from somewhere else. We have lost our way." A hundred years later these words still ring true. Which is why we're still reading him. ... Read more

Product Description
As an advocate of Distributism, an early 20th-century school of social thought developed by the author and his colleagues, Chesterton addresses the topics of concentration of wealth, poverty, work, agriculture, machinery, and capital in this famous work. He favored distribution of wealth while being antisocialist; he advocated ownership of private property while being anticapitalist. He argues that the economic order is bound by moral law and that man should be served by the economy rather than serving it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A Third Way
There is a third way between the two halves of the same coin, Socialism (in which the means of production are controlled by the state) and Industrial Capitalism (in which the means of production are controlled by a capitalist elite).That third way is known as Distributism, in which the means of production are widely distributed amongst the citizenry.

Chesterton is among the most humane of 20th century authors -- perhaps the author having the most books gracing my library shelves.Along with Belloc's Restoration of Property, this is a must-read for those interested in an alternative to the dehumanizing economics of our day.

An Economics Appraisal that Considered Men More Cogs in a Machine
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1937)wrote THE OUTLINE OF SANITY as a possible alternative to Big Capitalism and Big Communism. Chesterton offered an economic solution that was both "idealistic" and practicle. Bascially, Chesterton argued that, "Smaller is better." Chesteron knew that the economic arrangements in Great Britian and these United States had serious flaws that undermined small farmers, small shop owners, and industrial workers. He suggested that men should gradually attempt to reverse the trends that were taking place by restoring men as owners of small shops and small land holdings in place of large farms and monopolisitc owned factories which ruined so many people. Chesteron was clear that Big Communism an evil system which offered so actual solution.

Chesterton described Big Capitalism as a system whereby monopolists used a corrupt parliament and a corrupt legal system to condemn land and property to control economic activities and concentrate vast wealth in the hands of a few plutocrats. He described Big Capitalism as a system where the very wealth concentrated wealth in the pockets of a few while economic despoiling most people. He described Big Communism as a system where no one could have pockets because a politically powerful oligarchy of party hacks would run the economy and use and abuse the mass of people.

Chesterton also critisized the Machine Age, but he did not critisize machines or technology. Chestertoned that unfair and corrupt legislation resulted in Big Capitialism having access to factories and machines. He also noticed that the economic situation in Great Britain resulted in idle machines since so many men were unemployed. In other words, what good were machines without men to work them. Chesterton appreciated machines, but he was against worshipping machines.

Chesterton also critisized monopolists who wanted to make money (profits),but they wanted to lower wages and salaries. Chesterton wryly asked how could men buy what the monopolists produced with lower incomes. Part of Chesteron's solution was for people to boycott the Big Shops (Box Stores?)and patronize the Small Shops. Chesterton noticed that the Big Shops had poor service and inferior quality. However, the Small Shops had a "personal touch" and better made goods.

Another problem that Chesterton noticed was that Big Capitalists and Big Communists bitterly resented clear thinking, independent men. Both Capitialists and Communists wanted a standardized society whereby conformity and hypocrisy were substituted for honesty and independence. Big Capitalism ruined men by corrupting politicans and jurists. Big Communism ruined men by concentration camps and mass murder.

Chesterton showed concern that Big Capitalism and Big Communism dehumanized men. The monopolists wanted an utopia of stock brokers, and the communists wanted an utopia of utopian comrades, and neither of these existed or could exist. Chesterton want a practicle society of men who had a personal stake in their farms or shops and who had time to reflect on cultural attainments whether they be religion (for Chesterton the Catholic Faith) literature, song, dance, etc. Chesterton cited an example whereby Henry Ford, a Big Capitialist, did not know who Benedict Arnold was. For someone who touted "The American Way" and not know U.S. History was considered a sad state of affairs as far as Chesterton was concerned.

Chestertoned suggested a modified guild system where the rules were known by all men and where the plutocrats could not corrupt political representatives and jurists could restore a better economy and social order. Chesterton was clear that he respected free enterprise but not private enterprise. The latter abused the political legal systems to the disadvantage of everyone else.

While some writers argued that men should become gods or icons, Chesterton wanted me to be normal and free. Chesterton observed that while men had the vote, they had little else. Big Capitalists and Big Communists did not want men to have their own wives, children, or land. Both imposed legal restrictions on parents' raising chidlren and providing them with values and learning which functions were increasingly dominated by bureaucrats in the name of progressivism or socialsim.

One of the weaknesses of Chesterton' book is that he was not specific enough. Chesterton could have cited laws that literally robbed men of their land and wealth by having private property condemned in favor or Big Capitalists. Chesterton could have specified Acts of Parliament or the U.S. Congress that were designed to ruin small property owners such as recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed a corporation to take private property which is beyond belief here in the U.S.

Yet, Chesterton's book THE OUTLINE OF SANITY is a hopeful antidote to Big Capitalsim and its corrupting influences or Big Communistm with its unworkable system and use of concentration camp brutality to gain compliance. While Chesterton died in 1937, this book is prophetic and useful. If men destroy their civilization in favor of unworkable systems, Chesterton's book is there for the record.

You Say You Want a Revolution
Were Chesterton a camel, the thing that broke his back was a half- baked philosophy called Distribustism, a clunkily- named alternative to both Capitalism and Socialism. For a long time I believed that, because you can even read it in biographies of Chesterton and, naive reader that I am, I thought biographers knew what they were talking about.

Having dipped into this book, which reprints articles on that subject, however, I realize Distributism wasn't his hobby horse; it was his passion and his soul. It also strikes me as the best idea to come down the pike in about a hundred years, and if you want to call Chesterton a prophet (small 'p'), here's good reason for doing so. In other words, long before Marshall McLuhan, (an avid student of Chesterton) he said the medium is the message. In still other words, he said something I'm always saying, vote with your wallet. He even advocated the radical idea of making your own media choices.

In "The Bluff of the Big Shops" he points out that no matter how enticing a megoplis super mega store may be, you still always have the option to shop at small mart. In this book, first published in 1926, he meditated on the future of the then relatively recent, newly mass-produced Ford car. What Chesterton stands up for is private property and private enterprise. Although this sounds almost the same as free trade and free enterprise, to Chesterton there is an important distinction. One means the right of the wealthy to do what they like, and the other the right of the poor to do anything at all. His meaning is closer to the original draft of the American document, recognizing the right to life, liberty, and ownership of property.

I got this book through the American Chesterton Society, although I'm happy to see it's also on Amazon. The ACS's magazine, Gilbert, has continually run bits from these essays, which were so tantalizing as to make me want to read the book. This edition is from IHS Press, which bills itself as "the only publisher dedicated exclusively to the social teachings of the Catholic Church". Not that this is an overtly religious book. But it feeds from the same stream as the Catholic Worker Movement of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, and the still radical words of Pope Leo XIII in the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum: "On the Condition of the Working Classes". What goes around comes around, and some eighty years later, Chesterton's words seem more true and relevant than ever. If this book seems a bit pricey, think of it not only as an enthralling read, but as a textbook for revolution.

A powerful vision that justly demands consideration
The Outline Of Sanity is a philosophical treatise on the social vision of renowned British author and Christian philosopher G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), known as "distributism". Chesterton presents his antithesis to the impersonal bustle of increasingly fast-paced modern life, and offers a logical means for human beings swept by the tide to regain control over life and future. With a Catholic foundation yet meant to encompass people of all religious persuasions, Chesterton's vision of Distributism is a powerful one that justly demands consideration, particularly in this modern day and age where his concerns of a society of alienation multiply a thousandfold! ... Read more

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This Kindle file includes 29 books -- 10 books of fiction (The Ball and the Cross, The Club of Queer Trades, The Innocence of Father Brown, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Man Who Was Thursday, Manalive, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, The Trees of Pride, Tremendous Trifles, and The Wisdom of Father Brown) and 19 collections of essays (All Things Considered, The Appetite of Tyranny, The Crimes of England, Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens, The Defendant, Eugenics and Other Evils, Heretics, Lord Kitchener, A Miscellany of Men, The New Jerusalem, Orthodoxy, Alarms and Discursions, A Short History of England, Twelve Types, Utopia of Usurers and Other, Essays, Varied Types, The Victorian Age in Literature, and What's Wrong with the World). Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an influential English writer of the early 20th century. His prolific and diverse output included journalism, philosophy, poetry, biography, Christian apologetics, fantasy and detective fiction.

Chesterton has been called the "prince of paradox." He wrote in an off-hand, whimsical prose studded with startling formulations. For example: "Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it." As a Christian apologist he is widely admired throughout many religious denominations, as well as by many non-Christians[citation needed]. As a political thinker, he cast aspersions on both Liberalism and Conservatism, saying, "The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.""

Responding to customer feedback, I improved the formatting of this file on 7/3/2009.If you bought a copy before then, you should be able to download the new version at no additional cost. Feedback always welcome. seltzer@samizdat.com ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Everything Chesterton
This collection was one of the first items that I purchased for my new Kindle. I have long been an admirer of G K C, and the opportunity to pick up most of his published work for just a few cents was too good to be true.
I was not disappointed! Over the last six months I have returned to the collection frequently. The ability to have Chesterton within reach and readable at leasure is a blessing. While I have had some problems with navigation, this appears to be inherent in one of these magacollections, and in part no doubt due to my own need to become more familiar with the reader.
This collection is well worth the cost for any one with a love of good writing, good thinking, or just good Chesterton.
Enjoy! ... Read more

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Once upon a time there were two little boys who lived chiefly in the front gardenbecause their villa was a model one. The front garden was about the same size as the dinner table; it consisted of four strips of gravela square of turf with some mysterious pieces of cork standing up in the middle and one flower bed with a row of red daisies. ... Read more

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A Different Look at Chesterton
I have read some of G.K. Chesterton's fiction and religious non-fiction but had never read any of his newspaper articles. These reflections cover a variety of topics -- mostly light. I enjoyed them for his opinions, style, and the fact that they are short stories that can be read when just a few minutes are available. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to see another side of Chesterton's interests and writing skills.

Classic Chesterton
This is a compilation of essays written for his newspaper column. I am always impressed by his poetic and detailed descriptions of the world around him. He covers a variety of subjects and always turns the observations about life into truths that I did not expect. Among my favorites: A Piece of Chalk--where a drawing exercise turns into a lesson on the nature of truth, The Dragon's Grandmother--on why we should read fairy tales to our children, and Twelve Men--the best explanation I have read on why we have juries made of our peers and not professional jurors.

G.K. Lite
Anyone new to Mr. Chesterson's writings will find this book fun and entertaining. It will give you a glimpse into the genius of Chesterton's brilliant mind. Then you must move on to the more meaty, weighty, substantive philosophic works: Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man.

Wonderful writing makes for wonderful reading
If you're a fan of great writing, you'll be a fan of this collection.Each story within the collection is short, maximum 4 pages, and they get right to the point.However, like any great story, they save the best for last and you will find yourself looking forward to reading the last paragraph within each story as it is truly the best and most invigorating.Chesterton's control of the English language is stunning and his direct matter of proving a thing is awe-inspiring.If you're a fan of his other works, you may like this one even more because it doesn't take as long to get the same great Chesterton-messages out of the reading.I give this book 5 stars because it really is wonderful when you don't have all day to read, yet still want to learn something or be motivated that the world is not all bad throughout the day.If you've got 15 spare minutes, thats enough to flip through one of these stories and feel better about yourself and the world.

A Century of Wonders
2009 marks the hundredth anniversary of this book from 1909, which is a collection of columns the author penned for a British newspaper, the Daily Mail. As such it's a mixed bag; some of the writing is, in my view a 3, and some a 5, thus my rating of a 4. Sometimes I don't know what he's talking about. Other times I find myself quoting a paragraph in an e-mail. This book contains my first encounter with Chesterton, a brief essay called "On Lying in Bed", which I still think one of his best. But when I began this book, although I avidly devour G.K.'s novels, and some of his nonfiction, like Orthodoxy, this one didn't hold me.

I returned to it now and then, as one does, after reading rather more gripping reads. Then its magic kicked in, and in my view, some of the later essays, particularly those that are travelogues, are the best. Other readers will have their favorites; some of mine are:" The advantages of Having One Leg"; "The Twelve Men"; "The Wind and the Trees"; "In Topsy-Turvy Land"; "The Tower"; "The Orthodox Barber"; "Humanity: An Interlude"; "The Little Birds Who Won't Sing"; "The Travellers in State"; "The Prehistoric Railway Station"; "A Glimpse of My Country"; and "The Ballade of a Strange Town".

That's my dozen keepers from these 39 essays, a rather good haul from a book a century old. The difficulty in this volume is that the references, as in most newspaper columns, are to current controversies, culture, and even jokes of the day. The reason this book celebrates a centennial when so many others of the era are forgotten, is because for Chesterton, those passing fancies, all the rage at the moment, are signposts to conditions common to humanity. That's why he remains so quotable. But neither did he write vaguely about universals; he observed and commented on particular people and places in his time. That's why he remains readable.

Few read the sort of column collected here in our day, and fewer now write it. What one notices on reading any Chesterton, however, on dipping into any book almost anywhere, is his delight in living, and looking, and reuminating. This is not a self-help book, but any reader who helps him or herself to it, may be helped regardless, to see more, and enjoy life more. Because his message at bottom is it's OK to enjoy life, to see it as a good gift, to be thankful and revel in it. This is not the frantic optimism of a prescriptive self-help book. To Chesterton, it's simple realism. As he writes in "The Ballade of a Strange Town":

"The false optimism, the modern happiness, tires us because it tells us we fit into this world. The true happiness is that we don't fit. We come from somewhere else. We have lost our way." A hundred years later these words still ring true. Which is why we're still reading him. ... Read more

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This is the story of Francis of Assisi, who inspired a revolution in art that began with Giotto and a revolution in poetry that began with Dante. Here is the Francis who prayed and danced with pagan abandon, who talked to animals, who invented the creche.Amazon.com Review
There are certainly many studies of Saint Francis of Assisi that aninterested reader might find and many of them immensely praiseworthy. Butin reading G.K. Chesterton on Francis, you get two glories for one: first isan enlightening study of this most beloved of Christian saints and secondis Chesterton himself, one of the great Christian writers of the 20thcentury, who converted to Roman Catholicism in 1922 because, it has beensaid, "only the Roman Church could produce a St. Francis of Assisi." Published shortly after his conversion, Chesterton wrote this book in partto reclaim Francis for the church. There are always those who want to claimFrancis for their cause, Chesterton recognized, who also fail to understandthe spiritual and intellectual ground upon which he stands. Chestertonwould return Francis to Christ. As he summarizes, "however wild andromantic his gyrations might appear to many, [Francis] always hung on toreason by one invisible and indestructible hair.... The great saint wassane.... He was not a mere eccentric because he was always turning towardsthe center and heart of the maze; he took the queerest and most zigzagshortcuts through the wood, but he was always going home."

As one editor of Chesterton's puts it, "of St. Francis he might have saidwhat he said about Blake: 'We always feel that he is saying something veryplain and emphatic even when we have not the wildest notion of what itis.'" --Doug Thorpe ... Read more

Customer Reviews (32)

Much More than Merely a Biography
This book is written and crafted by a genius. What came in the mail was much more than merely a biography, this is a work of precision cultural criticism and wit which can be both pointed and beautiful at the same time.

I love how Chesterton picks out his contemporaries or past thinkers and then tells us why they are wrong for thinking x. There is so much truth in this book-- I could go on and on about how relevant this work is to us in the 21st Century. When talking about Ancient Rome: "Thus the effect of treating sex as only one innocent natural thing was that every other innocent natural thing became soaked and sodden with sex" (21).

What makes Chesterton so good, though, is that he is not parading merely his own opinion throughout the book-- he is speaking with the fullness of truth backing him up. The reader will experience what happens when Jn 8:32 is applied to literature: "the truth will set you free" and you will then be free to take down that which is not true-- and do it with style.

Interesting and unique look at the life of St Francis
A fascinating and unique look at St Francis by one of the greats; rather than simply detailing St Francis' life in biography form, Chesterton takes events from St Francis' life that show his uniqueness, and then weaves theology and Franciscan practice around them. Thu the life and beliefs of this great Saint are explained in ways an "ordinary" biography could not. A wonderful book.

The True Spirit of the Man
For quite a long time, even though I should have known better, I've avoided getting to know St. Francis of Assisi, being somewhat repulsed by the saccharine hippie that he is so often made out to be. Happy and carefree to some extent Francis was, but how one reconciles this image with the suffering of the Stigmata, and the fasting and mortification of Mt. Alverno, leaves a lot to be worked out.

But thankfully now in Chesterton, I have encountered St. Francis as he was and is, in all his beautiful paradoxes. I have encountered a man who was what I have always wanted to be: "a poet who lived his life as a poem," a man who felt the Sun his brother, and the Moon his sister, not because of the sweetness and mere prettiness of nature, but because together we owe all our existence and purpose to the grace of God our creator. And so the apparent madness of Francis's almost brutal asceticism, Chesterton explains, is not the senseless behavior of a lunatic, but can only be understood as the complete self-giving of one desperately in love.

It must be said that, as in all great writing, Chesterton's book gives as much insight into Chesterton himself as he does his subject--so alongside the Saint we encounter another man of ranging mind, delicious wit, and perhaps above all, wholehearted sincerity. And in both men we find one worthy of admiration--imitation, even. But in this case, as in only the most transcendent of writing, the way to attain such high company is also illuminated: lively faith and complete trust in God. To imitate the best of Chesterton, as to imitate St. Francis himself, is to imitate Christ and so make a poem of our own lives--to take up the wild and almost desperate call to share in the creative work of a loving God.

This book is not a complete history of Francis's life, nor was it intended to be. But in St. Francis of Assisi, G. K. Chesterton truly captures the spirit of the man, while expressing his own poetic character. Both are refreshing, both are an inspiration. And both, we can pray, might lead us to appreciate God's grace more dearly.

Glad to get to know Chesterton
A friend of mine who is a devotee of Chesterton suggested reading this biography of St. Francis as a good way to acquaint myself with his writings. She is correct. This small book is packed full of interesting thoughts about the times and circumstances in which St. Francis lived and how he helped shape the late Middle Ages with his, for the time, novel and often shocking approach to Christian living. Chesterton's insights into the person of St. Francis are excellent. I highly recommend this to anyone who wishes to become comfortable with this fine author's writings.

The life of a saint and too much else!
This short volume by Chesterton on the life of St. Francis of Assisi did not satisfy me either as a biography, as a glimpse into his time period or as a devotional read. Chesterton's circuitous style of writing while passable in longer works gets annoying here particularly at moments when he goes off on long tangents. These tangents add something to the narrative, but by the time you arrive at their end you've already forgotten where you began from. The big chunks on the life of St. Francis are well done, quite honest and quite approachable, but the fact that they're interspersed with so much wandering text makes this a difficult book to read. There are better books on the life of St. Francis out there. For instance, although I've never read the English translation, the best Life of St. Francis that I have thus far read is El Hermano de Asís by Ignacio Larrañaga. ... Read more

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Written in 1910, applies to 2009
G.K. Chesterton's "What's Wrong With the World" is not a bit of light reading. There are heady thoughts throughout and the reader is invited to do some of the heavy lifting as well. I don't agree with all of Chesterton's conclusions either but he does have a wonderful way with words. Have you ever had an argument with someone in which you thoroughly disagreed with some of their points but admired the way they laid them out and their turns of the phrase? That is my experience with G.K. Chesterton in a nutshell.

I only picked up this volume because I read somewhere that C.S. Lewis was a devoted fan of Chesterton.

Be prepared, there is no one thing that is wrong with the world - it is a collection of things. Of course, any thinking person knows that there are always a collection of problems that are inter-related and cause all sorts of things to be wrong in the world.

Chesterton is strongly pro-Catholic church so be prepared that one of the things wrong with the world is that the world is not Catholic. Being a Lutheran myself, I smiled and moved on. Women working outside of the home is a problem Chesterton identifies as well. Not because women are inferior (he reveres the housewife and acknowledges it is draining) but because the home is a special place if well-tended by an extraordinary women - a place where the family can actually be free of the demands of society and work. Plus, a homemaker is, by the very nature of the job, a skilled amateur that knows a little about "a hundred trades." Homemakers are not specialized and that is good in Chesterton's eyes.

Why is specialization a problem? People become experts in just one thing and don't learn about the rest of the world. Think of our modern college system. Someone can get an MBA in business but never have taken an art class. Doctorates of art in all likelihood have never taken an econ class. Are those people well educated?

Probably his biggest thing that is wrong with the world is its habit of "altering the human soul to fit its conditions, instead of altering human conditions to fit the human soul." In other words, we conform to the arbitrary demands of society rather than making sure that society conforms to the needs of the human soul.

Tired of the "Think of the Children" mantra? So was Chesterton 100 years ago: "There has arisen...a foolish and wicked try typical of the confusion. I mean the cry, "Save the children." It is, of course, part of that modern morbidity that insists on treating the state (which is the home of man) as a sort of desperate expedient in time of panic. This terrified opportunism is also the origin of the Socialist and other schemes."

Chesterton also has several comments on education that to this 20 year veteran teacher sound grumpy, fuddy-duddy and exactly 100% right. ... Read more

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G.K. Chesterton with an introductions by Ralph McInerny and Joseph Pearce Here, together in a single volume, are the two biographies that many critics consider both Chesterton's best, and the best short portraits ever written of these two great saints. St. Francis of Assisi is a profoundly Catholic work, explaining and illuminating the life of St. Francis in a way no other biography has. The spiritual kinship the author felt with his subject enables the reader to delve into insights on the character of Francis that have eluded many. St. Thomas Aquinas is enriched by the author's unique ability to see the world through the saint's eyes, a fresh and animated view that shows us Aquinas as no other biography has. Acclaimed as the best book ever written on Aquinas by such outstanding Thomists as Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, and Anton Pegis, this brilliant biography will completely ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

The Dumb Ox and the Little Friar together -- how good can it get?
These most excellent works of G. K. Chesterton were enhanced by introductions by Ralph McInerny and Joseph Pearce.It was especially nice to have his essays on both saints in one book.

Aquinas: heavenly, St Francis: excellent
Gilson said that Chesterton's book on Aquinas was the best book on Aquinas and I can see why he says this.Chesterton captures the spirit of the Great Philosopher of common sense (following Aristotle)and perhaps Chesterton can do that because he himself was the apostle of common sense! But not only does he capture the spirit of Aquinas but he managed to move me deeply over the great saint whose work is a hymn in praise of creation.I was particularly taken by the description of Aquinas' death.

But the relevance today of Aquinas and Aristotle who stands behind him is the issue of whether we can trust our reason - Aristotle and Aquinas both shout out: "Yes, we can" but much of modernity philosophy is agnostic -simply refusing to see what is before us.Further, Aquinas is key to the dialogue which must always take place between faith and reason.We simply cannot have a faith which is contrary to reason - this precisely is the great message of Aquinas, which Chesteron wonderfully explains.

More than that, reason can lead us to God in whom we live and move and have our being.And going further, the senses can lead us to God because unlike the Platonists Aquinas teaches that"Everything that is in the intellect has been in the senses".Everything about which we think including our thoughts about God and the after life is saturated with the pictorial and non-pictorial life of the senses .But what does it mean to die and to be separated from our body until the end of time -what manner of sense less life can this be: Ah, that is a great mystery!

I will give some examples from the text to explain why Chesterton is so good:

"But I am not ashamed to say that I find my reason fed by my senses; that I owe a great deal of what I think to what I see and smell and taste and handle; and that so far as my reason is concerned,I feel obliged to treat all this reality as real".

"It was the very life of Thomist teaching that Reason can be trusted; it was the very life of the Lutheran teaching that Reason is utterly untrustworthy".

" a man is not a man without his body, just as he is not a man without his soul.A corpse is not a man; but also a ghost is not a man"

"St Thomas was making Christendom more Christian in making it more Aristotelian" (i.e. moving it away from the platonic tendencies established since Augustine and moving back towards rejoicing in the glory of creation)

"It is the fact that falsehood is never so false as when it is very nearly true".

"St Thomas was willing to allow the one truth to be approached by two paths, precisely because he was sure that there was only one truth. Because the faith was the one truth, nothing discovered in nature could ultimately contradict the Faith.Because the Faith was one truth, nothing really deduced from thre Faith could ultimately contradict the facts".

This is a key passage and we see that theme reflected in the writings of Benedict XVI in his latest encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate" when he says that faith should be purified by reason and reason should be purified by faith.

"Any extreme of Catholic asceticism is a wise, or unwise, precaution against the evil of the Fall; it is never a doubt about the good of Creation".

"If the morbid Renaissance intellectual is supposed to say: "To be or not to be - that is the question", then the massive medieval doctor does most certainly reply in a voice of thunder, "To be - that is the answer".

"The body was no longer what it was when Plato and Porphyry and the old mystics had left it for dead. It had hung unpon the gibbet.It had risen from a tomb.It was no longer possible for the soul to despise the senses, which had been the organs of something that was more than man.Plato might despise the flesh; but God had not despised it."

"After the Incarnation had become the idea that is central to our civilisation, it was inevitable that there should be a return to materialism, in the sense of the serious value of matter and the making of the body. When once Christ had risen, it was inevitable that Aristotle should rise again".

"St Thomas was not a person who wanted nothing and he was a person who was enormously interested in everything. As compared with many other saints, and many other philosophers, he was avid in his acceptance on Things; in his hunger and thirst for things".

Chesterton movingly describes the scene where the crucifix speaks to St Thomas and asks him what he asks of God:

"The stretched arms were truly spread out with a gesture of omnipotent generosity; the Creator himself offering Creation itself, with all its millionfold mystery of separate beings, and the triumphal chorus of the creatures. That is the blazing background of multitudinous Being, that gives the particular strength, and even a sort of surprise, to the answer of St Thomas, when he lifted at last his head and spoke with, and for, that almost blasphemous audacity, which is one with the humility of his religion: "I will have Thyself".

Chesterton beautifully recounts St Thomas end and the reading of the Songs of Solomon at his death bed and then:

"But there must have been a moment, when men knew that the thunderous mill of thought had stopped suddenly; and that after the shock of stillness that wheel would shake the world no more; that there was nothing now within that hollow house but a great hill of clay; and the confessor, who had been with him in the inner chamber, ran forth as if in fear , and whispered that his confession had been that of a child of five".

His legacy and thinking

"St Thomas stands founded on the universal common conviction that eggs are eggs "

"Aquinas is almost always on the side of simplicity and supports the ordinary man's acceptance of ordinary truisms."

"The Thomist begins by being theoretical , but his theory turns our to be entirely practical."

Aquinas on St Francis of Assissi

Given that Chesteron's book on Aquinas is so wonderful, one is bound to feel a little deflated on reading his book on St Francis but to be deflated would be to do the book an injustice for it too is an excellent short book.So, I would recommend than rather than follow the order of this compendium, start with St Francis first and then end on the high note of Aquinas.

Let me just give a few quotes to show how Chesterton captures St Francis:

"Rossetti makes the remark somewhere, bitterly but with great truth, that the worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank". "All goods look better when they look like gifts".

"A philanthropist may be said to love anthropoids. But as St Francis did not love humanity but men, so he did not love Christianity but Christ. Say, if you think so, that he was a lunatic loving an imaginary person: but an imaginary person, not an imaginary idea"

"The truth is that people who worship health cannot remain healthy".

"It may seem a paradox to say that a man may be transported with joy to discover that he is debt".

"It is the highest and holiest of the paradoxes that the man who really knows he cannot pay his debt will be forever paying it. He will be always throwing things away in a bottomless pit of unfathomable thanks".

"Every heresy has been an effort to narrow the Church...it set the mood against the mind".

"St Francis was above all a great giver; and he cared chiefly for the best kind of giving which is thanksgiving.If another great man wrote a grammar of assent, he may well be said to have written a grammar of acceptance, a grammar of gratitude. He understood down to its very depths the theory of thanks; and its depths are a bottomless abyss.He knew that the praise of God stands on its strongest ground when it stands on nothing.He knew that we can best measure the towering miracle of the mere fact of existence if we realise that but for some strange mercy we should not even exist"

worth digging into
I am reading this a second time because I knew after the first reading that I was missing a lot. It is hard to get into because Chesterton has such an indepth way of describing things but the comparison of the two saints is a brilliant way of introducing them .It is worth reading more than once.

Sketches of Two Seminal Saints in Classic Chesterton Style
Legendary Christian philosopher GK Chesterton wrote concise semi-biographies of St. Francis and St. Thomas Aquinas in 1923 and 1936 (the year of his death), respectively. Those years saw him convert to Catholicism, crystallizing a journey taking him from early appreciation of St. Francis in poetry and essays, to the depths of Oscar Wilde's nihilism to the freedom of orthodoxy expressed in that book and in his classic "Everlasting Man."

For their contrasting both saints' lives, drawn differently as silhouettes of Sancho Panza and Don Quixote (to name one of Chesterton's first, richest allegories in the Aquinas book), both books could with editing meld into the single volume Ignatius Press published. Both used Chesterton's mix of allegory, paradox and common sense eloquence making each of his books a re-discovery. Best of all, in Chesterton's words, both saints "reaffirmed the incarnation, by bringing God back to earth."

Chesterton writes each saint's biography inside out, seeing the major events of both lives through the prisms of their times. He shows bothrefuting their near-assigned destinies: born "on the hem of the imperial purple," Aquinas asks to be a begging friar and winds up arrested, imprisoned, and even tempted by his family. Born a successful merchant's son, young Francis Bernadone renounces his possessions (including his father Peter), takes poverty and dependence as a lover and walks into the woods in a hair-shirt, taking every existing thing as his family, every day as one without history, and finally writing his life philosophy in "Canticle of the Sun."

Loving the poor, having and wanting nothing, both depended on and thanked God for everything. Francis begged for the worst crumbs and traded down with beggars, using the remainder rebuild churches and lives. Aquinas appreciated his gift senses as windows into God's beauty and reality, refusing to separate earthly process from heaven's factual logic. His "Ens" philosophy, stemming from his need to draw Aristotle's influence back to Christ, filled volumes and stood as the easiest theory to understand and accept of how the world works. (Chesterton's image of the child at the window watching grass makes it simpler still.)

The same can be said of Chesterton's humorous to miraculous anecdotes attributed to St. Francis. These range from Francis' attempts to convert the Sultan of Damietta by throwing himself into fire, creating a snow angel substitute family to refute temptation, to receiving Stigmata (which Chesterton defends with stiletto-sharp apologia). Chesterton also shares part of Francis' relationship with St. Clare, from which formed one of three religious orders he'd inspire. After Francis' death, without his guidance, these would splinter into heresy before the Papacy wisely reigned its passions against what Chesterton referred to as "the staleness" of a new religion.

Benito Mussolini, who hijacked his country's proud religious and secular history to gain power, once said, "The history of saints is mainly the history of insane people." Chesterton's sketches of Thomas Aquinas and Francis of Assisi counter by saying both these sane, logical saints, mistaken by their times for poison, were medicine because they were antidotes. They stood and yet stand against changing 20th-21st centuryfashions and facelessness. Few Chesterton writings bring his enduring linguistic and logical gifts to such high yet focused purpose and proof. These books, economically and ideologically joined, make essential reading for followers of Chesterton, Catholic apologetics, and Christian history.

A high altitude view of two great Saints.
St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis make for quite a contrast--St. Thomas was one of the greatest brains of the Catholic Church, and St. Francis had one of the greatest hearts.Chesterton has a knack for putting ideas and people into the largest possible context with the least amount of details.These biographies, though short on specifics, put across the essence of each man's character and his impact on the world. Chesterton's writing style in both is more poetic than his essays and even some of his fiction.

"And for him [St. Thomas] the point is always that Man is not a balloon going up into the sky, nor a mole burrowing merely in the earth; but rather a thing like a tree, whose roots are fed from the earth, while its highest branches seem to rise almost to the stars."

"He [St. Francis] devoured fasting as a man devours food.He plunged after poverty as men have dug madly for gold.And it is precisely the positive and passionate quality of this part of his personality that is a challenge to the modern mind in the whole problem of the pursuit of pleasure."

Chesterton piles on insights like these on page after page. Chesterton paints a very personal picture--after reading these biographies, I felt as if I really knew who these men were, how they spoke, how they thought, how they might have talked to me.

One caution--these works may not be the best place to start. In my case, I didn't know much about St. Francis to begin with.Since Chesterton doesn't provide many historical details, some of his references (e.g., to his miracles and famous sayings), were hard to follow.
... Read more

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Alarms and Discursions
All Things Considered
The Appetite of Tyranny
Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens
The Ballad of the White Horse
The Ball and The Cross
The Barbarism of Berlin
The Club of Queer Trades
The Crimes of England
The Defendant
Eugenics and Other Evils
George Bernard Shaw
Heretics
The Innocence of Father Brown
Lord Kitchener
Magic, A Fantastic Comedy
Manalive
The Man Who Knew Too Much
The Man Who Was Thursday
A Miscellany of Men
The Napoleon of Notting Hill
The New Jerusalem
Orthodoxy
Robert Browning
A Short History of England
The Trees of Pride
Tremendous Trifles
Twelve Types
Utopia of Usurers and other Essays
Varied Types
The Victorian Age in Literature
What I Saw in America
What's Wrong With The World
The Wild Knight and Other Poems
The Wisdom of Father Brown
... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Perhaps a bargain but...
Yes, a great selection and obviously a great bargain but as there is no active contents page it is impossible to find your way around. It's probably better to download the books individually.

Excellent Deal for Chesterton Lovers... and we all should be Chesterton Lovers!
Did you ever wonder why Barnes & Noble always have those wonderful hard-cover copies of "War and Peace" on sale for $7.99, while the latest worthless "How to be Rich, Thin, and Powerful in 10 Easy Lessons" self-help monstrosity sells for $29.95 in paperback?

The answer, apart from supply and demand in general, is copyright: Tolstoy (or his heirs) do not receive any money from the sale of his books which are in the public domain. One of the main advantages of the Kindle is that it makes so many classics even more easily available -- in this case, for the price of one buck we get a selection of G. K. Chesterton's most famous essays.

True, being in the public domain, you can get these works literally for free online at online web sites like "Project Gutenberg"; but, after all, one can get the books themselves for free from the public library. Surely paying $0.99 to save the hassle of collecting all the works, and to have them in easy-to-read form on one's own kindle, is worth it for most people.

Not only is the price right, but the works themselves are classics. G. K. Chesterton was a most witty writer of philosophical, historical, and social criticism essays, as well as fantasy fiction (The Man who was Thursday, The Napoleon of Notting Hill) and detective novels (Father Brown). He did it from a Christian perspective, being the most famous Christian apologist of the 20th century, but one doesn't have to agree with his Christianity, or be religious at all, to enjoy his musings, wit, and charm.

Only Chesterton could write, for instance, that he is in favor of having the death penalty, but only by lynch mob -- since then there is "a chance some of those who truly deserve it" would be hanged, since it is "shocking to contemplate" how few of the leading politicians are hanged. Only he could hit the nail on the head about the difference between social customs and personal habits -- "customs are generally unselfish. Habits are nearly always selfish". Or the problem with communism -- that is assumes "no man would want more than his share, and then argue about whether his share should be delivered by motor-car or hot-air balloon".

Much could be said in his favor, but I presume most who are looking for kindle works of Chesterton in the first place already know and love him.

Now, you can read a very nice representative selection of Chesterton's works (except for the Father Brown mysteries, which presumably aren't in the public domain) on your kindle -- all for less than the price of a cup of cheap coffee. Hey, what do you have to lose? ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Chesterton on Chesterton
GK Chesterton of course writes well.I have enjoyed his Father Brown series.I hear great quotes by him through people that I respect.I am enjoying this autobiography quite a bit.It is not a page turner, but is fascinating.I take it slow and easy in measured doses.If you like biography, this is autobiographical.Not so much facts and details as impressions of various events in his life and their impact on his future.It is a good read.

The Everlasting Chesterton
G.K. Chesterton, "the prince of paradox," was remarkable for approaching every subject imaginable from an unexpected angle, turning it on its head, and summing up its essence with a few words, a wink, and a grin. He approached his life in precisely the same way, resulting in one of the most entertaining and unusual autobiographies I've ever read.

Chesterton doesn't give the read a David Copperfield-style breakdown of his entire life, from birth to the present with everything in between. In describing his childhood, he finds a number of key moments and early memories that he describes as ordering the rest of his life. The sight of a water tower near his home, his father entertaining him with a paper prince in a toy theatre, fairy tales--all set him on the way to becoming the man he was. Chesterton's autobiography is therefore very introspective, dwelling less on events than developments in his own beliefs. He describes neither marrying his wife nor his brother's death in World War I, but writes at length of the effect of both events on his beliefs and behavior in seemingly unrelated incidents later in life.

And, of course, Chesterton's book is witty. Hilarious at times. The later, more topical chapters, in which Chesterton describes acquaintances in the political and literary worlds, are replete with funny stories about state dinners, embarrassing episodes involving newspapermen, and wry conversations about bizarre hobbies. It is also remarkable how many great figures he knew--and got along with--including not only friends like Belloc but perennial enemies like G.B. Shaw and H.G. Wells.

In short, Chesterton's autobiography didn't deliver what I expected--and that's not a bad thing.

Highly recommended.

Chesterton autobiography
Have heard many quotes attributed to Chesterton over the years, but never read anything by him till recently.His autobiography is a hoot!--he writes in a very droll manner, but has an incredible way with words.Not done with the book yet, but can't wait to read more.

A witty, insightful chronicle brimming with wisdom, experience, and more than a few life lessons learned the hard way.
Completed only a few weeks prior to the close of the author's long, successful and happy life, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton is the life story of one the modern era's most prolific authors, credited with approximately one hundred books on topics ranging from philosophy, theology, poetry, literature, fiction, and history. Written in an amiable, accessible first-person voice, and illustrated with some forty rare black-and-white photographs, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton is a "must-have" for researchers and students of Chesterton's literary work, and highly recommended for college and public library collections. A witty, insightful chronicle brimming with wisdom, experience, and more than a few life lessons learned the hard way.

The Restless Victorian
Like many English majors upon graduation I was sick to death of Enlgish lit and sold my books off at the local used book store. As "classic rock" seems to be whichever moldy oldies a radio station wants to play, so "classic lit" is similarly a mixed bag of whatever gets shoved into the Norton Anthologies.

Much later I found out how politically motivated such anthologies are (especially the non-fiction ones) and as usual, the Oxford Press ones proved to be far better collections. But reading Chesterton's autobio, I realized how little I got out of my one Victorian lit class, and how much more there was to this era than Thomas Hardy and George Eliot.

Being more and more known as a Chesterton fan-atic and having garnered three pages of notes, bon mots and one-liners from this book, why do I give it four stars? Simply because I require Randall P. or some other competent commentator to provide far more copious footnotes of all things Victoriana. A great deal of history and literature (Victorian pop culture)is herein lightly touched on or briefly referred to by G.K.C. as if readers actually knew what he was talking about.

A friend listened to this book on tape and his take on it was that unlike Orthodoxy and other Chesterton works which continually dazzle the reader, this one is concerned more with enlightening them. Rather than quote the whole book, as one may be tempted to do, I'll confine myself to this reflection on World War One, which Chesterton calls the Great War since this book from 1936 falls before WW II:

"What would the Kaiser, with his mailed fist and his boasts of being Atilla and the leader of the Huns, even in time of peace, have been like if he had issued completely victorious out of a universal war?...What has come out of the War?(?) We have come out of the War, and come out alive; England and Europe have come out of the War, with all their sins on their heads, confused, corrupted, degraded, but not dead....The only defensible war is a war of defence. And a war of defence by its very definition and nature, is one from which a man comes back battered and bleeding and only boasting that he is not dead."

Chesterton has done this reader a great service of actually making him interested in the Victorian era, and rekindled something of that spark for reading that being an English major plodding through a Norton Anthology nearly inevitably kills. He's done something more than breathed life into an oft-dismissed and dusty age, in his lust for life he holds out the promise of breathing life even into our own. ... Read more

Product Description
"The Blue Cross," "The Sins of Prince Saradine," "The Sign of the Broken Sword," "The Man in the Passage," "The Perishing of the Pendragons" and "The Salad of Colonel Cray."
... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Chesterton: Using Parable as Insight for Reality
These short stories are delightful. Chesterton is a wordsmith able to conjure up engaging images and speak truth through fiction. The mysteries intrigue the reader, and Father Brown is thought provoking. Thanks to Dover Thrift Editions for making an extremely affordable version of these favorites.

Six Delightful Father Brown Stories - Great Introduction
G. K. Chesterton created more than fifty entertaining Father Brown stories. This Dover Thrift Edition offers six delightful short stories illustrating the deductive genius of this quiet, amusing, slightly eccentric, contemporary of Sherlock Holmes.

Written in the early 1900s, these short stories move more slowly than many modern mysteries. Chesterton may even sidetrack to explore a moral issue or moral ambiguity. But beware. Father Brown, a man of the church, is not entirely naïve and innocent. Like Sherlock Holmes, he is a keen observer. The reader will need to remain alert to keep pace with his remarkable deductions.

The first two stories, The Blue Cross and The Sins of Prince Saradine, come from the first twelve Father Brown stories, published as The Innocence of Father Brown (1911). The earliest stories often feature Flambeau as a dazzling, brilliant arch criminal. Later, Flambeau abandons his risky career and becomes a constant companion to Chesterton's remarkable cleric.

The last four stories are taken from the second Father Brown collection, The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914). The Sign of the Broken Sword reveals a startling crime. The Man in the Passage offers a surprising and amusing solution to conflicting testimony. The Perishing of the Pendragons provides mayhem and danger in an unlikely setting. Hopefully, The Salad of Colonel Cray will not be found in most cookbooks.

I highly recommend this little Dover edition to anyone new to Father Brown. Once acquainted, the reader can then look elsewhere for larger collections.

Great stories that will have you wanting to read more!
Six classic tales featuring the priest-sleuth, Father Brown. Excellent tales, they are engaging and addictive, and will leave you looking for more!

Stimulating mysteries
These stories by G.K. Chesterton were very enjoyable reading.Father Brown is an endearing character, and his intellect is impressive (but then again, what literary detective's isn't?).His companion Flambeau isequally enjoyable.I was disappointed with one thing: I had the impressionthat Father Brown was a detective in the sense that he solved crimes forthe police, like Sherlock Holmes.Actually, this was only the case in acouple of the stories.Instead, he put his mind to solving mysteries thatweren't necessarily crimes.

Collection of stories packed with meaning and literary power
After reading The Hammer of God, one of the Father Brown stories, I found myself both perplexed and enlightened.Chesterton is one of the few short story authors I have encountered that can consolidate a global message into a short parable.In the Father Brown stories, he uses his superb wit and literary elegance to send readers through innumerable epiphanies, usually with the aid of some very potent metaphors.One quotation that I will always remember from this story is "humility is the mother of giants; one sees great things from the valley, only small things from the peak."For me, G.K. Chesterton has always been able to manipulate landscape and concrete images into a meaningful, and lucid, metaphor.The Hammer of God, in particular, is inundated with these powerful metaphors that tackle the essence of man's struggle with his outside world, and with himself. I found many of the other stories to be very stimulating, although the Hammer of God was clearly my favorite.If you seek literay merit and powerful lessons, but have neither the time nor the inclination to read a novel or anything else over one hundred pages, G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories are perfect for you. ... Read more

Product Description
A new edition of G. K. Chesterton's masterful study of St. Thomas.Amazon.com Review
It is known that when the great Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton began his book on Saint Thomas Aquinas (who is, quite possibly, the most influentialof all Christian theologians), "his research for the project consisted of avery casual perusal of a few books on his subject." To say that Chestertonwas no authority is an understatement. To say further that he has written amasterpiece of elucidation may also be an understatement. Etienne Gilson,the chief scholar of Aquinas in the 20th century, said flatly "I considerit as being without possible comparison the best book ever written on St.Thomas. Nothing short of genius can account for such an achievement.... Chesterton was one of the deepest thinkers who ever existed; he was deepbecause he was right; and he could not help being right; but he could noteither help being modest and charitable, so he left it to those who couldunderstand him to know that he was right, and deep."

So how has he accomplished this feat? By simplifying, as his editor says,without oversimplifying. He turns his own lack of intimate knowledge to hisadvantage by concentrating on the core elements of Aquinas' thinking: hisaffirmation of the goodness of creation; his defense of common sense; and"the primacy of the doctrine of being." In this way he grasps--and helps usgrasp--the importance of Aquinas for us today. As Raymond Dennehy haswritten, it's as if Chesterton is saying to us "the truths [Aquinas] wasgetting at--the basic principles of reality and reason--are in themselvesreally quite simple. Your basic intuitions were right all along." --DougThorpe ... Read more

Customer Reviews (49)

Maritain's Biography Better
This is the first book of Chesterton I have ever read. He did an excellent job concisely and briefly introducing St. Thomas Aquinas for people who have no philosophical background nor had ever previously known much about this saint. But really to get to know the saint, you have to slog through the philosophy in his writings, or read an introduction to his philosophy such as that by the great 20th century Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain: An Introduction to Philosophy. For people who want a little more background on his philosophy as how it relates to the saint as a person, Maritain also wrote this highly-recommended biography: St. Thomas Aquinas (available gratis here at the website of the Jacques Maritain Center at Notre Dame)

A lively read with insightful handling of the life and works of a great philosopher and theologian
"Saint Thomas Aquinas" is a bibliographic work on the life and historical scholarship of Philosopher and Theologian, Thomas Aquinas. Chesterton introduces his work as an attempt at "a popular sketch of a great historical character who ought to be more popular" (xv). Chesterton is true to his intent. The book has an airy balance between rigorous intellectual engagement with the philosophy and theology of Aquinas, while maintaining a level of humor, and scattered satirical comments of the kind that provide relief and yield to the book an overall down to earth quality, grounding the works of one of the greatest intellectual figures in a particular and relatable place and life. Chesterton is interested in the historical, philosophical, and theological development leading up to the scholastic period of Aquinas, but he is not overly concerned with accuracy in his depiction of detailed events. Instead he makes broad sweeping statements that are generally true so as to arrive at his point without boring the reader.

The lively nature of his handling of Aquinas's life and works results in a thoroughly enjoyable and fascinating study of one of the greatest Church figures.

Purple hagiography
As other reviews have stated, one gets the strongest possible dose of Chesterton, only the vaguest, yet thoroughly adulatory hagiography of Aquinas. His habit of rhetorical paradoxicalism wears thin rather soon. At one point, the strong influences of the Arab philosophers promised some interest, both historically and philosophically, but soon we were back to the amazing shyness and amazing amazingness of the Saint, who had the distinction of asserting that Catholicism involved reason, in the face of actual reason wafting in from the ancient world by way of Aristotle.

All in all, thoroughly dated, both in Chesterton's gushings and reflexive Catholic jingoism, and the underlying philosophy, such as it is, of Aquinas.

It's All About Chesterton
Full disclosure:I couldn't get more than 2/3 of the way through this short book.

"Saint Thomas Aquinas" is not a biography.Strict biographic facts are few and far between.There are no footnotes and no bibliography.If there's even one date, I didn't notice it.

I suspect Chesterton wasn't familiar with the documentary sources on Thomas' life, since he pads the book with potted history, cultural criticism, ethnic stereotyping, and drivel.That's what writers do when they don't know their subject well.Here's one example, where Chesterton discusses Thomas' body-type:"[H]is head was of a very real and recognisable type...It was that sort of head with the heavy chin and jaws, the Roman nose and the big rather bald brow, which, in spite of its fullness, gives also a curious concave impression of hollows here and there, like caverns of thought.Napoleon carried that head upon a short body.Mussolini carries it today, upon a rather taller but equally active one.It can be seen in the busts of several Roman emperors, and occasionally above the shabby shirt-front of an Italian waiter; but he is generally a head waiter."Maybe Thomas delivered pizzas, too.

Another passage discusses Thomas' ancestry thus:"On one side, [Thomas] inherited from the energy that made the episode of the Normans, whose strange organizing raids rang and rattled like flights of arrows in the corners of Europe and the ends of the earth; one flight of them following Duke William far northward through the blinding snows of Chester; another treading in Greek and Punic footsteps through the island of Sicily to the gates of Syracuse.Another bond of blood bound him to the great emperors of the Rhine and Danube who claimed to wear the crown of Charlemagne; Red Barbarossa, who sleeps under the rushing river, and Frederick II, the Wonder of the World, his second cousin, and yet he held by a hundred more intimate ties to the lively inner life, the local vivacity, the little walled nations and the thousand shrines of Italy."OK.Uh huh.

While "Saint Thomas Aquinas" fails as biography, it doesn't even try to be philosophy.If Chesterton makes any careful arguments at all, I missed them.Maybe they are in the last third of the book.

If "Saint Thomas Aquinas" isn't biography or philosophy, then what is it?Well, I'd say it's an in-your-face cultural polemic.Chesterton wears his Catholicism on his sleeve, daring non-Catholics to pick a fight.On every page can be found put downs of Platonists, Muslims, Protestants, Buddhists, Victorians, Communists, and others I'm surely overlooking.He even dumps on Augustinians!

Maybe it was wounding to be Catholic in early-20th century Britain.Maybe Chesterton had an inferiority complex.I don't know.But I can't imagine anyone liking the book who didn't have a chip on his shoulder and a need to lash out at non-Catholics.I gave it two stars only because of the frequent well-turned prhase.Chesterton wasn't a great thinker, but he had some great one-liners.

Turning the world upside down
G. K. Chesterton excelled at "turning the world upside down."It is pretty well-known that his research for this biographical essay was pretty spotty: he scanned a couple of books (or three) and then sat down to write his own book, which SOMEHOW stands as simply the best biographical essay of the man ever written.

Like most of Chesterton's books, it's a joyful book.While paying close attention to Thomas, he also enjoys "turning the world upside down."

What world could that be?Let me offer a description, somewhat exaggerated.

"The genius of Ancient Greece shone but dimly in the Roman Empire, and, following the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe entered the Dark and Middle Ages, from which it was only saved by the Renaissance."

No, says Chesterton --- and he pays attention to some details, such as Plato and Aristotle.The genius of Ancient Greeece did indeed find its first flower in the philosophy of Plato, but Plato was decisively corrected by Aristotle.The Roman Empire came and went, and the new religion of Christianity became, over the centuries, extremely neo-Platonic and Augustinian.When Thomas Aquinas was born, the forces of Augustine and neo-Platonism represented the Conservative Old Order.Thomas Aquinas took on those old fogies and (almost singlehandedly) made Christianity pay serious attention to Aristotle.This happened long before the "Renaissance" and might well be called simply "The Birth" of a stupendous new universal philosophy which remains vibrantly "relevant" to the present day.

The idea that Thomas Aquinas' "Summa" represents the most complete and satisfactory explanation of the human condition -- well, that's pretty revolutionary! ... Read more

Product Description
G. K. Chesterton was an early critic of the philosophy of eugenics, expressing this opinion in his book, Eugenics and Other Evils.

Its advocates regarded eugenics as a social philosophy for the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention.Today it is widely regarded as a brutal movement which inflicted massive human rights violations on millions of people.

HIs criticism of Eugenics expands into a more general criticism of a modern craze for scientific officialism and strict social organization.

Chesterton's writings consistently displayed wit and a sense of humour. He employed paradox, while making serious comments on the world, government, politics, economics, philosophy, theology and many other topics. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Remains a great book
I read this old and excellent book, here in Brazil.Writen by Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 - 14 June 1936), when the pseudo-science of eugenics was perhaps more popular is USA, than ecology is today, this book remains excellent and relevant.And this happens, more than 80 years after its publication.
Then, eugenics was a thing supported by great american politicians, such as american Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Taft,Herbert Hoover,etc.Outside USA famous leaders such as the last Kaiser, Lenin, Stalin,etc. were eugenists.Famous scientists of this time, such as Thomas Alva Edison, Albert Einstein, Wright Brothers, Charles Lindenberg,Nicolas Tesla, etc. were eugenists.Writers such as H. G. Wells and Georger Bernard Shaw were eugenists and socialists.
At first, this book was a work of courage.It was against the political, scientific and press stablishment.
At second, this book is divided in parts:
PART ONE: THE FALSE THEORY.
PART TWO: THE REAL AIM.
I really read another ediction of this excellent book, when I could read:
"Most Eugenists are Euphemists. I mean merely that short words startle them, while long words soothe them. And they are utterly incapable of translating the one into the other, however obviously they mean the same thing. Say to them "The persuasive and even coercive powers of the citizen should enable him to make sure that the burden of longevity in the previous generations does not become disproportionate and intolerable, especially to the females?"; say this to them and they sway slightly to and fro like babies sent to sleep in cradles. Say to them "Murder your mother," and they sit up quite suddenly. Yet the two sentences, in cold logic, are exactly the same."
In another page of this book, I read:"I am myself primarily opposed to Socialism, or Collectivism or Bolshevism or whatever we call it, for a primary reason not immediately involved here: the ideal of property. I say the ideal and not merely the idea; and this alone disposes of the moral mistake in the matter. It disposes of all the dreary doubts of the Anti-Socialists about men not yet being angels, and all the yet drearier hopes of the Socialists about men soon being supermen. I do not admit that private property is a concession to baseness and selfishness; I think it is a point of honour. I think it is the most truly popular of all points of honour. But this, though it has everything to do with my plea for a domestic dignity, has nothing to do with this passing summary of the situation of Socialism. I only remark in passing that it is vain for the more vulgar sort of Capitalists, sneering at ideals, to say to me that in order to hate Socialism "You must alter human nature." I answer "Yes. You must alter it for the worse."
In the end of this book, there's a third part, with articles writen by eugenicists/eugenicists. Ironically, they were doomed by time, as false preachers.
The ediction that I read wasn't this book, published by Dodo Press.Even so, my give my congratulation to all persons, publishing the works of this genius called Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 - 14 June 1936).

Prophetic writing
G.K. Chesterton was WAY ahead of his time in the writing of this brilliant little book..It's just as pertinent today as it was in the early 1900's.Great stuff.

A Chilling Voice from the Past
Eugenics was more than a pseudoscientific fad of the early 1900�s: it provided much of the philosophical underpinnings of the Nazi �master race� and its logical culmination in the concentration camps.Today its ideas lurk more subtly behind such movements as birth control, abortion rights, euthanasia, and cloning. So, this book by GK is far more than an historical curiosity; the arguments he sets forth enable us to see far more clearly the dangers of conceding to a government, a group of elites, or even a vague movement, even a fraction of our rights and responsibilities concerning our own life, death, and progeneration.In the first third of the book, GK utterly dismantles the superficial logic of eugenics.In the second third, he exposes the real objectives of the movement that lay beneath the surface.The final third is a compilation of truly bone chilling articles and letters written by eugenicists of the period. Essentially, GK believes that the movement arose out of the capitalist desire to maintain cheap labor and the socialist desire to scientifically organize society.His analysis of these seemingly opposed forces has a heavy political, social, and historical focus, and is surprisingly light on religious considerations.He foresees that eugenics unleashed would result in an utterly inhuman society.Unfortunately the Nazis proved his theory.He foresees the dehumanizing effects of even a more moderate eugenics, which unfortunately has come to pass and is quite evident in the monstrous plight of our poor, homeless, mentally handicapped, and unborn.How do these social horrors occur?GK believes that most people are right, but don�t know that they are right.Thus they�we--are susceptible and even defenseless to attacks by an organized group of activists driven by malevolent or merely foolish motives.This book shows how that actually played out in pre-WWII Europe, and gives us a better understanding of how it is happening now, and how we might reverse course. ... Read more