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When G. K. Chesterton first published Eugenics and Other Evils in 1922, he seemed to be the lone voice of reason against the fashionable concept of selectively breeding a population for “desirable” traits. Though later generations came to associate eugenics with the horrors of the Third Reich, worldwide support for the philosophy was at an all-time high when Chesterton penned this brave and prophetic work. His unique combination of somber analysis and coruscating wit produces an argument too persuasive to ignore.
Eugenics and Other Evils showcases Chesterton at the height of his rhetorical powers. His discussion of capitalism, socialism, and the concerns that guide our moral decisions is as pertinent today as the day it was penned.
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If you think orthodoxy is boring and predictable, think again. In this timeless classic, G. K. Chesterton, one of the literary giants of the twentieth century, presents a logical and personal reasoning for Christianity in model apologetic form. Gilbert Keith Chesterton was a self-described pagan at age 12 and totally agnostic by age 16. Yet, his spiritual journey ultimately led to a personal philosophy of orthodox, biblical Christianity. The account of his experiences, Orthodoxy bridges the centuries and appeals to today's readers who face the same challenges of materialism, self-centeredness, and progress.
"Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith mean believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all."
--G.K. Chesterton
A unique book, Orthodoxy addresses our faith struggles and how we communicate our faith to others. Through philosophy, poetry, reason and humor Chesterton leads us on a literary journey toward truth.
This edition includes a foreword by Philip Yancey who, like C. S. Lewis and other leading Christian writers, found this book to be pivotal his Christian experience. Yancey credits Chesterton with helping to revive and define his faith.
G.K. Chesterton is well known for his reasoned apologetics, and even some of those who disagree with him have recognized the universal appeal of such works as his biography on Saint Francis. Chesterton has been called the “prince of paradox.” Time magazine, in a review of a biography of Chesterton, observed of his writing style: “Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out.”
How fitting that Francesco Bernardone was born just after the Dark Ages when the world was awakening. He started out as a colorful troubadour with a fondness for French poetry, extravagant with money . . . until the sight of a beggar seeking alms opened his eyes to a world beyond himself. The scene so moved him, he vowed to God that he would devote his life to the poor and embrace a life of simplicity. This sense of humility and generosity continues to call to each of us today. With great affection, Chesterton explores the life and times of St. Francis—his joyous devotion, his sense of compassion and love for all creation, his visions and miracles, his stigmata, and his band of followers that became the Franciscan Order. Praising this great and original man who became one of the most popular figures in Christendom, the author calls him "a poet whose whole life was a poem." Here is a stimulating read for Chesterton fans, Christian readers, and anyone looking for a burst of pure inspiration.
"It is constantly assumed, especially in our Tolstoian tendencies, that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like... That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is - can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? That is the problem the Church attempted; that is the miracle she achieved." - from Orthodoxy.
Written in 1925, this enduring polemic still strikes a modern chord. Addressing evolution, feminism, and cultural relativism within the context of religion, the book also examines religious skepticism. How does one sustain belief in Jesus Christ—and the Church—when, throughout history, the key to religious truth has been constantly reshaped? According to Chesterton, the shape of the key is not important. What matters is that it fits the lock and opens the door. An emphatic affirmation of Christian faith, The Everlasting Man is leavened with the author's characteristic wit and wisdom, and appeals to the mind as well as the heart.
A wind sprang high in the west, like a wave of unreasonable happiness, and tore eastward across England, trailing with it the frosty scent of forests and the cold intoxication of the sea.
Seeking shelter from a storm of biblical proportions, a mysterious new tenant by the name of Innocent Smith arrives on the doorsteps of Beacon House. Eccentric, spry, and eager to make new friends, Innocent turns the culture of this ho-hum London boarding establishment upside down. But the fun and games come to an abrupt end when word arrives that the new lodger is wanted on charges of burglary, polygamy, desertion of a spouse, and murder. Only a jury of his peers can determine if Innocent is as guilty as he appears.
Written in upbeat and lighthearted prose, this charming novel of life, salvation, and the human predicament captures G. K. Chesterton at his finest.
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Written in a down-to-earth and familiar style, Orthodoxy nevertheless presents formal and scholarly arguments in the explanation and defense of the tenets underlying Christianity. Paradox and contradiction, Chesterton maintains, do not constitute barriers to belief; imagination and intuition are as relevant to the processes of thought and understanding as logic and rationality. "Whenever we feel there is something odd in Christian theology," he observes, "we shall generally find that there is something odd in the truth." Chesterton defines his insights with thought-provoking analogies, personal anecdotes, and engaging humor, making his century-old book a work of enduring charm and persuasion.
In a colorful neighborhood of West London, two poets are at each other’s throats. Gregory is an anarchist who longs to upend civilization with the power of his words, while Syme is a man of reason, convinced his opponent’s beliefs are nothing but a fashionable pose. To prove his seriousness, Gregory introduces Syme to the central council of European radicals, where the newcomer is given the codename “Thursday.” Though none will admit it, every man in the council is a liar—and each is deadly in his own way.
Gregory has no inkling that his new comrade Syme is an undercover detective, sent by Scotland Yard to destroy the council from within. But as the other men reveal their secrets in turn, it becomes clear that Thursday is not the enemy; it is the mysterious figure named Sunday whom they all should fear.
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Born into an aristocratic family, Thomas rejected a life of privilege to join a new order of preaching and teaching monks, the Dominicans. Chesterton compares Thomas' views to those of another famous thirteenth-century figure, St. Francis of Assisi. He also explores the influence of Aristotelian philosophy on Thomas' character, along with the effects of Parisian culture, society, and politics. The final chapter examines the impact of Thomas' work on later religious thinkers, including Martin Luther. This brief but vivid profile provides fascinating glimpses into the medieval scholastic movement, and it presents an excellent beginning to further explorations of St. Thomas Aquinas' works.
Culled from the thousands of essays he contributed to newspapers and periodicals over his lifetime, the critical works collected for this edition pulse with the author's unique brand of clever commentary. As readable and rewarding today as when they were written over a century ago, these pieces offer Chesterton's unparalleled analysis of contemporary ideals, his incisive critique of modern efficiency, and his humorous but heartfelt defense of the common man against trendsetting social assaults.
This groundbreaking work epitomizes why G. K. Chesterton is considered one of the pithiest and most versatile philosophers of his era. An anthology of his early writings, What’s Wrong with the World takes on such thorny subjects as public education, jingoism, feminism, imperialism, politics, and the modern family. Chesterton’s humor and intellectual verve are on full display, making these incisive essays as applicable in their exploration of ethics and the human heart today as when they were penned over a hundred years ago.
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Antiquated. Unimaginative. Repressive. We've all heard these common reactions to orthodox Christian beliefs. Even Christians themselves are guilty of the tendency to discard historic Christianity.
Yet as we read through the literature in Christianity’s past, we learn that we are in better company with our beliefs than we might think. Through his enchanting book, Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton reminds us of the paradoxes of our faith and the joy that comes when we explore them.
From the foreword by Matthew Lee Anderson, author of The End of Our Exploring:
“How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it?”
And with that question, G.K. Chesterton recounts the heart of an intellectual journey that took him from the edges of a nihilistic pessimism into the center of the paradoxical joy of Christian orthodoxy. His book is not a defense of the Christian faith, at least not primarily, so much as an attempt to explain how the startling paradoxes and sharp edges of the creed explain everything else.
It is a dated work, dealing in the categories and concerns of Chesterton’s contemporaries, and yet it comes nearer timelessness than anything we have today. Though Orthodoxy was written near the start of the 20th century, I have dubbed it the most important book for the 21st. There are few claims I have made in my life that I am more sure of than that one.
This compilation of “fleeting sketches,” written by G. K. Chesterton while he was a columnist for the Daily News, contains the humor, foresight, and intellectual curiosity that quickly made the young writer a household name throughout London. A tribute to the playfulness of Chesterton’s spirit, Tremendous Trifles contains such gems as “An Accident,” in which the author crashes an omnibus into a hansom cab, and “The Advantages of Having One Leg,” a charmingly thorough investigation of optimism and pessimism.
Fans of Chesterton’s most famous works—from the Father Brown Stories to Heretics and Orthodoxy—will delight in the cleverness and invigorating wit of Tremendous Trifles.
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First serialized in the Commonwealth, G. K. Chesterton’s fantastical third novel opens with a debate between Professor Lucifer and Brother Michael as they soar across the sky above London. Part farce, part theological exploration, The Ball and the Cross soon settles on the story of another pair of contraries. When differences of opinion lead an atheist and a devout Roman Catholic to plan a duel to the death, fate intervenes and propels the two men toward deeper understanding.
Widely considered to be one of Chesterton’s most accessible and substantive works, The Ball and the Cross was commended by Pope John Paul I for the profound truths it reveals. Readers for over a hundred years have marveled at the brilliance of this exhilarating tale about belief, nonbelief, and our collective search for the truth.
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In addition to incisive assessments of well-known individuals ("Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Making the World Small" and "Mr. H. G. Wells and the Giants"), these essays contain observations on the wider world. "On Sandals and Simplicity," "Science and the Savages," "On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family," "On Smart Novelists and the Smart Set," and "Slum Novelists and the Slums" reflect the main themes of Chesterton's life's work. Heretics roused the ire of some critics for censuring contemporary philosophies without providing alternatives; the author responded a few years later with a companion volume, Orthodoxy (also available from Dover Publications). Sardonic, jolly, and generous, both books are vintage Chesterton.
'You see, I had murdered them all myself ... I had thought out exactly how a thing like that could be done, and in what style or state of mind a man could really do it. And when I was quite sure that I felt exactly like the murderer myself, of course I knew who he was.'
Unassuming super-sleuth Father Brown has such brilliant powers of deduction that he knows more about crime than the criminals themselves. In this fourth volume of stories, the shabby priest unravels the most baffling conundrums involving, among others, a flying fish, a man with two beards and the Worst Crime in the World.
G. K. Chesterton was born in 1874. He attended the Slade School of Art, where he appears to have suffered a nervous breakdown, before turning his hand to journalism. A prolific writer throughout his life, his best- known books include The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1922), The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) and the Father Brown stories. Chesterton converted to Roman Catholicism in 1922 and died in 1938.
'Chesterton knew how to make the most of a detective story' Jorge Luis Borges
"A sketch of St. Francis of Assisi in modern English may be written in one of three ways. Between these the writer must make his selection; ... First, he may deal with this great and most amazing man as a figure in secular history and a model of social virtues. ... Second, he may go to the opposite extreme, and decide, as it were, to be defiantly devotional. ... Third, he may try to do what I have tried to do here; ... I am here addressing the ordinary common man, sympathetic but sceptical, and I can only rather hazily hope that, by approaching the great saint's story through what is evidently picturesque and popular about it, I may at least leave the reader understanding a little more than he did before of the consistency of a complete character; ...."
"Here is an historical character which is admittedly attractive to many of us already, by its gaiety, its romantic imagination, its spiritual courtesy and cameraderie, but which also contains elements (evidently equally sincere and emphatic) which seem to you quite remote and repulsive. But after all, this man was a man and not half a dozen men. What seems inconsistency to you did not seem inconsistency to him. Let us see whether we can understand, with the help of the existing understanding, these other things that now seem to be doubly dark, by their intrinsic gloom and their ironic contrast."
Published in 1904, G. K. Chesterton’s debut novel is set eighty years in the future. Technology and social mores remain the same, but the England of 1984 boasts a government in which ineffectual kings are selected at random from an otherwise apathetic populace that has “lost faith in revolutions.” The political system hits a snag when Auberon Quin is selected as the next monarch. More joker than potentate, Quin amuses himself by installing a series of laws and bizarre customs that inflate civic pomp and circumstance to laughable proportions. These policies inevitably put Quin, a leader who does not believes in any of his dictums, on a collision course with his most earnest supporter: Adam Wayne, otherwise known as the Napoleon of Notting Hill.
A favorite among scholars and critics, The Napoleon of Notting Hill showcases the eclectic wit and unorthodox intellect that established Chesterton as one of the twentieth century’s most influential and far-reaching thinkers.
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Set in the early-twentieth century, Father Brown's world is quintessentially English; crime scenes await in country houses, rural parish churches and quaint gardens as well as foggy London streets and shadowy railway stations. Father Brown may be a kindly cleric, but his bumbling nature disguises a detective mind to rival Sherlock Holmes...
The character of Father Brown, brought to life by Mark Williams, is based on a real parish priest and the idea that priests, through hearing Confession, know the worst of human nature more than anyone, including the police. Father Brown uses his experiences to put himself into the mind of the criminal to solve each mystery and catch the perpetrators.