Many people don't realize that Chesterton wrote his most famous work, _Orthodoxy_ *long* before he had officially converted to Catholicism. _Orthodoxy_ was published in 1908, and Chesterton was received into the Catholic Church in 1922.

If _Orthodoxy_ was written as a defense of Christian sanity against the heresies of the modern world that were driving men mad, the works contain in this volume are Chesterton's defense of the Catholic Church as the bastion of that Christian sanity.

This volume would be worth the purchase just for the short essay, "What Do They Think?" -- or even for the reminder that "Christianity is not a religion; it is a Church." I *highly* recommend this book.

That answer is summed up by Gilbert's own words, "To get rid of my sins." Indeed, he writes..."For there is no other religious system that does really profess to get rid of people's sins. It is confirmed by the logic, which to many seems startling, by which the Church deduces that sin confessed and adquately repented is actually abolished; and that the sinner does really begin again as if he had never sinned."

And this beauty is found only on page 9. 540 delightful pages follow.

Ignatius Press has done a wonderful deed in reprinting the collected works of Chesterton. This is Volume III, and it deals exclusively with Chesterton's writings on Christ and His Church.

Like all of Chesterton's work it is a delight to read. In it he tries to answer an unanswerable question - that of his conversion.

In the end, Chesterton is left to say, "I might treat the matter personally and describe my own conversion; but I happen to have a strong feeling that this method makes the business look much smaller than it really is.... I would say chiefly of the Catholic Church that it is catholic. I would rather try to suggest that it is not only larger than me, but larger than anything in the world; that it is indeed larger than the world."

G. K. Chesterton is a hugely powerful voice, both intellectually and spiritually. I resonate to him as I do to few others (a few examples of my personal favorites, going in different directions, would be Leo Tolstoy, Ayn Rand, Robert Heinlein, James Branch Cabell). "The Flying Inn", published in England in 1914, is a tale of a man who is confronted by modern cultural trends - and, oddly enough, this focus on all things "modern" (in 1914) is no less relevant today than it was a hundred years ago. Chesterton saw England as being a culture in transition and in conflict with itself, and the struggles he saw play out dramatically in this novel: The individual versus the collective; common sense versus political correctness; right and wrong versus legal and illegal; a healthy soul versus a healthy body. But to state these themes makes the book sound like a lecture, and it's not that (although it does freely meander into occasional philosophical discourses, some of which didn't hold my interest); this story is, more than anything else, an adventure and an odyssey, which begins when Mr. Humphrey Pump wants to visit the local pub in pursuit of a pleasant hour, but he finds it is being shut down by lawmakers who have decreed the neighborhood bar to be an unhealthy anachronism. Thus begins a tale of flight and civil disobedience (hence the title, "The Flying Inn"). We meet a curious collection of characters that are driving, hindering, observing, and contemplating this safe, regulated, soulless, terrifying world of the near future.

The descriptions of multicultural mandates are prescient. For example, one of the major characters, an English lawmaker, is enamored with Islam, and he becomes an agent of social progress, having decided it's necessary to make England less offensive to its Muslim friends - thus England is to be purged of pubs, not to mention, for example, ending the offensive Christian habit of marking ballots with a cross (they should be marked instead with a crescent). A lot of the details of this enlightened "tolerance" ring disturbingly true when juxtaposed against the excesses of the present day.

Like "Gulliver's Travels", "The Flying Inn" is both a serious social comment and a lot of fun. There's a reason it's still in print after all these years.

A fantastical rollercoaster of a book presenting the deranged but life-loving forces of Merry England holding back the tide of dreary and oppressive modernity in the form of Prohibition, Vegetarianism and Theosophy. The plot involves a pre-1914 alliance between the teetotal Ottoman Empire and 'progressive' British killjoys, keen to introduce Europe to the spiritual benefits of Islamic culture. Only a singing Irish Captain and a pub landlord with a keg of rum and a giant cheese stand in their way. As their 'flying inn' evades prohibition on a rollicking journey round England, Chesterton makes swipes at the various forms of 'advanced thought' prevalent in his day, satirised in drinking songs, and in the absurd meetings of the Simple Souls, a society devoted to progress. Even 'Post-Futurist' art gets a hammering, until the Falstaffian culture of old England is restored to the sound of many a drunken song.

A loopy book, to be sure, and one which manages to be gloriously politically incorrect. Some of the targets of Chesterton's attacks will seem obscure to modern readers, but the fun is irresistible. A major precursor to Magic Realism, well before its time. The Post-Futurists are far less Post-modern than this. And we should all drink to that.

Chesterton, as the last representitive of a certain type of Englishman, is constantly at odds with the mores and assumptions of this modern world. For this reason he is probably more worth reading than any of his contemporaries, even Shaw and Wells, because whereas we have largely inherited their ideas, in Chesterton you find that which would never have occurred to you. His writings on the subject of Democracy should be required reading: our society is almost completely ignorant on that subject, to its tremendous detriment. Nearly every essay in _Heretics_ is a revelation, and _Orthodoxy_ is practically a study in how subtle and surprising good sense can be.

There are good, and not so good, reviews of Orthodoxy already, none for Heretics. So I will deal with the latter, only. I have the John Lane edition, 1905.

Heretics is somewhat neglected in Chesterton's oeuvre, possibly because it is an early work (1905), and many of the writers discussed are out of fashion now. Yet, I believe Heretics contains not only his best writing, but it already establishes the main themes of his life's work.

Technically, it is a book of literary criticism, but from an unusual point of view, that of his subjects' philosophy.

"I am not concerned with Shaw as one of the most brilliant and one of the most honest men alive; I am concerned with him as a heretic--that is to say, a man whose philosophy is solid, quite coherent, and quite wrong." (p. 22)

Brilliant though he was, Shaw expected reality to conform to an inhuman ideal:

"He has all the time been silently comparing humanity with something that was not human, with a monster from Mars, with the Wise Man of the Stoics, with the Economic Man of the Fabians, with Julius Caesar, with Siegfried, with Superman. Now, to have this inner and merciless standard may be a very good thing, or a very bad one, it may be excellent or unfortunate. but it is not seeing things as they are." (pp. 62-63)

This is excellent writing, whether we entirely agree or not. It may be a little unfair to Shaw, but it is fair to life.

Chesterton is often called an optimist. But he knew the other side, as anyone reading Alzina Stone Dale's life, The Outline of Sanity, can find out. Joy in living, good beer, conversation, balance, sanity, these were achievements, not just nature.

I have never read, or even found, the books of Mr. George Moore who wrote an autobiography. Chesterton attacks his egoism, the interest in the world as related to his own temperament:

"We should really be much more interested in Mr. Moore if he were not quite so interested in himself. We feel as if we were being shown through a gallery of really fine pictures, into each of which, by some useless and discordant convention, the artist had represented the same figure in the same attitude. 'The Grand Canal with a distant view of Mr. Moore," "Effect of Mr. Moore through a Scotch Mist,' 'Mr. Moore by Firelight,' 'Ruins of Mr. Moore by Moonlight,' and so on seems to be the endless series." (pp. 131-132)

That has to be one of the funniest sentences ever written, and I could barely type it for laughing. A bit later on the page, Chesterton gives his vision of originality:

"Thinking about himself will lead to trying to be the universe; trying to be the universe will lead to ceasing to be anything. If, on the other hand, a man is sensible enough to think only about the universe; he will think about it in his own way. He will keep virgin the secret of God; he will see the grass as no other man can see it, and look at a sun that no man has ever known."

There is no space to mention all the wonderful writing in Heretics. I will mention his often expressed view of the narrowness of the larger world, where one can choose one's companions, as opposed to the nation, the neighborhood or the family, where one has to take people the way they are, with all their foibles.

"The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day he was born." (p. 190)

As always, Chesterton's ideas are eminently discussable! No commentary of mine could do justice to the variety, wisdom, and good humour in this book. The best thing would be to find a copy and read it.

In keeping with many of his works, Chesterton examines the ideas of sanity, madness, and modern thought- often coming to conclusions most moderns would not like. The percepetion Chesterton gives, though eighty years old, is remarkably fresh and relevant. For the enemies of good in Chesterton's time have not really changed, aside from some slight vagrancies in vocabulary. Be forewarned: atheistic thought is taken to the hammer {as it well should be! ha!}, and all its forebearance of "modernity" is shown to be the true madness of life, rather than the seeming madness of Gabriel, who is sane {as we see, in more ways than one}.

This is a fine, quirky sort of book, relatively short, but filled with excellent insight. And it's an enjoyable read at that- a real shame it's been neglected {along with much of Chesterton's work}. I for one propose to come back to it again.

While not nearly as well known as The Father Brown mysteries or The Man Who Was Thursday, the quirky adventures of Gabriel Gale -- poet, artist and lunatic-keeper -- provide excellent entertainment for an evening spent curled up with a good book. This collection of short adventures explores some basic ideas about human nature, specifically,the ideas of poetry, insanity and sin. Some events in the stories are worthy of a laugh out loud, but each also has a darker side that causes the attentive reader to shudder, as Chesterton clearly outlines the differences between these.

Chesterton is at his best in his criticism, and this is no exception. His novels show something o the Dickensian flare, but nowhere is he more apreciative of the master than here.

I had to read this book for school, and I really enjoyed it! It's a collection of short mysteries which are solved by a "mild, hardworking little priest, named Father Brown." I'm not too crazy about mystery stories normally, but these were great! Father Brown is so awesome! He's one of my favorite characters out of all the books I've read, and that's saying quite a bit. This book is funny at times, and contains lots of small tidbits of wisdom. I highly recommend it.

A compilation of G.K. Chesterton's writings on men and women, children, sex, divorce, marriage, and the family, Chesterton's essays are as appropriate today as they were when they were written.

Chesteron, as only Chesterton can, defends the sacredness of marriage and the home so desperately in need of salvaging today.

Broken into short chapters, the book is easily read and very enjoyable.

G.K.Chesterton is the best critic of Dickens, and these introductions to his novels his best work. If you are seeking an answer to why Dickens is so enduring, these short essays will answer you. If you are already a Dickensian, these essays are a delightful condensed expression of everything you already know. A pity that it is out of print. It is THE book I try to give to friends who want an introduction to Dickens.

Chesterton's _Autobiography_ is one of the best Christian autobiographies that are out there. Follow Chesterton on his journey out of the insanity of the early 20th century and into the freeing sanity of the Catholic Church.

Chesterton's insights into various figures and movements of the early 20th century are a great joy to read, and still are important today in combatting various contemporary insanities. If you want to understand more about one of the greatest English authors of the 20th century, this book is a must have.

This volume, the first in Ignatius Press's _Collected Works_ of Chesterton series, contains what is probably G. K. Chesterton's most famous work, _Orthodoxy_.

What many people do not know is that Orthodoxy was written only at the end of a long debate in the British press. Chesterton had been making a name for himself in English journalism for attacking the Spirit of the Age in turn-of-the-century England; his critics (rather justly) claimed that it was unfair for Chesterton to attack others' beliefs without stating what he himself believed. _Orthodoxy_ was the result.

This volume allows the reader to trace the story from the beginning, in the so-called "Blatchford Controversies", through the critique of Chesterton's contemporaries in _Heretics_ to its culmination in _Orthodoxy_. _Orthodoxy_ is definitely the star of the volume, but there are treasures to be found in the other works as well. Knowing something about the figures mentioned in _Heretics_ does help, but is not strictly necessary, as their heresies are alas still with us.

In my opinion, this volume is the perfect entre into Chesterton's thought, and would make a valuable edition for anyone concerned about clear thinking in regards to life, the universe, and everything.