One of Chesterton's highly acclaimed short biographies, writing just before WWII he called this 'a popular sketch of a great historical character who ought to be more popular'. St Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274) was born into an aristocratic Italian family and forsook his privileged position, took a vow of poverty, and became a Dominican monk. A brilliant thinker, and revolutionary in his day, he proceeded to become one of the most influential philosophers and theologians that has lived. It explains how Aquinas' influenced thinkers in his day and how that thought is an influential strand in our modern worldview.

Several experts on Aquinas have acclaimed this very enjoyable book as the finest introduction to the man and his works. It introduces the man himself and some of his philosophy, which is modern and scientific in tone. This is not to be surprised at when we consider that his university professor was Albertus Magnus, who paved the way for modern science by taking certain elements of Aristotle more seriously than anyone before. Aquinas' theology is not covered on grounds of space and complexity. Chesterton is writing at his best, and while he assumes a fair degree of knowledge on the part of the reader he covers a great deal of ground in a short space. His usual paradoxical sense of fun and wordplay is to the fore. Chapter seven, 'The Permanent Philosophy' is excellent, and at only twelve pages would serve as a good primer of philosophy, something to read before and alongside Bertrand Russell's 'The Problems of Philosophy' perhaps.

Father Brown appears in only one story, "The Donnington Affair", which does NOT appear in _The Complete Father Brown_. Don't be fooled by the poetic qualities of Chesterton's writing - as a charter member of the Detection Club, G.K. can set a puzzle as well as anyone when he puts his mind to it. His personal quirks, some of them unlovely, appear in a few of these stories, so that one can cheat a little towards a solution, knowing how Chesterton's opinions on certain subjects are likely to affect the development of the story; regarded purely as puzzles, though, they're quite clever.

"The White Pillars Murder" features 3 detectives - the great criminologist Adrian Hyde and his two junior assistants John Brandon and Walter Weir. This story alone would be worth the price of the book; it hasn't been collected much, and can be fiendishly difficult to find. Most of the story follows Weir and Brandon doing the legwork, with Brandon in the sidekick role. Chesterton does a beautiful job here.

"The Tremendous Adventure of Major Brown", "The Singular Speculation of the House Agent" - These are the first and fourth stories from _The Club of Queer Trades_, and are best appreciated in an edition of that book including Chesterton's original illustrations (which aren't included in _13 Detectives_). Briefly, the 2 Grant brothers encounter in each such adventure someone who qualifies for membership in the club - that is, who has invented a brand-new profession - under various suspicious circumstances. Rupert, the professional detective, parodies Sherlock Holmes, charging around jumping to all the wrong conclusions; Rupert's older brother Basil (drawn as a self-portrait by the author) figures out, in the end, what's going on. The Grants' narrator, incidentally, isn't counted as one of the 13 in this collection.

"The Garden of Smoke" features Mr. Traill, formerly of Scotland Yard. The viewpoint character, however, is Catharine Crawford, just starting a new job as companion to the poet Mrs. Mowbray. (Few of Chesterton's stories have a woman in the lead role - see also 'The Moderate Murderer' in _Four Faultless Felons_.)

Horne Fisher appears in two stories, each time with a different sidekick. "The Hole in the Wall" is one of Chesterton's country house mysteries - Prior's Park, in this case, in the district of Holinwall. (The origin of the names is covered at the beginning of the story.) Like the Father Brown story 'The Red Moon of Meru', he makes a point of mentioning whether a house is actually stolen property, from Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries. (Chesterton converted to Catholicism as an adult, and was eloquent on the subject.) "The Bottomless Well" is one of Chesterton's stories set in one of the Empire's eastern possessions, where a dead man isn't found *in* the great pit of the title - but *why* wasn't he?

"The Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse", "When Doctors Agree" - These are the first and third stories from _The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond_. Mr. Pond, as suggested by his name, is a very quiet, mild person (in fact, he *is* a government bureaucrat), but there's more beneath the surface than first meets the eye. Like flashes of fish in a pond, odd, apparently contradictory statements sometimes appear in his conversation, when he tries to compress an odd experience into one or two sentences. His friends then have to drag the story out of him. :) The details of presentation differ from story to story, but all are organized as stories-within-a-story, wherein one of Pond's paradoxes must be explained. If this appeals to you, see also _Four Faultless Felons_, wherein each story's focus is a different paradoxical character.

Gabriel Gale appears in two stories. "The Shadow of the Shark" In "The Finger of Stone", the great scientist Boyg - some sort of high-powered authority on the process by which fossils are formed - is missing and presumed dead; Boyg's former servant Bertrand joins Gale as one of the 'detectives' working out what happened to the old fellow. (Given that evolution vs. creation science was one of Chesterton's hot buttons, one needs to keep one's eyes open during this story.)

"The Donnington Affair" - In 2 parts, the first by another author setting up a challenge for Chesterton to solve via Father Brown in the second half, which may explain why it had previously been overlooked for the 'complete' Father Brown collection to date. It does not appear in any of the individual collections (The Innocence/Wisdom/Secret/Scandal of Father Brown).

Chesterton's poetry does not quite match the height of The Man who was Thursday, but in pieces like "Lepanto" it is as good as most so-called classics. Try this now!

This, to me, is a good example of a book that is primarily premise. The idea of London being broken up into little city states is amusing, but Chesterton doesn't do enough with the comic possibilities. It was difficult for me to enjoy this book, while constantly being reminded of "Passport to Pimlico," a much more whimsical take on the notion.

The theme of the Napoleon of Nottingham Hill is that it is better to live a short exciting life than a long boring one. GKC would argue that the moment when you are most lucid and the world is convinced that you are mad is exactly when you are the most sane. The Napoleon of Nottingham Hill is the story of how an irrational war among London's suburbs finally gives meaning to the lives of moderns who have become so board with living. The book also explains what humor is and how man can stand proud without sinning. If you read one book by GKC, let it be this book.

G.K. Chesterton has seen the future of men.
Auberon Quin, a man who takes nothing seriously. He is chosen as a leader that runs his country as a joke.
Mr. Buck, a man who takes himself too seriously. He accepts Quin's eccentric leadership as long as it doesn't stand in the way of progress.
Adam Wayne, a man who takes everything and everybody (except himself) too seriously. He believes Quin's way of the world is not a joke, but romantic and truthful. He fights for it with all his might!
These men help take the reader on an adventure of exploration of our life, our actions & our deepest beliefs. And what's more ?
-- a defense of our sense of "home" and our sense of "humor"!

A zealous Christian is offended by a zealous atheist's blasphemous declarations, and challenges him to a duel. The whole world gets involved as they try to stop the fighting, and the two zealots team up to find a way to fight to the death. They become partners in their mutual resolve to kill the other. The reader follows the wild twists and turns as they go to great extremes to destroy the other's religious convictions. This book is about the fight between the ball (atheism) and the cross (Christianity), and it is reflective of the world at large.

The structure of the book is a bit strange and totally unpredictable. You'll wonder at first what chapter 1 has to do with the rest of the book...but keep reading and you'll see. The ending is more unpredictable than any book I've ever read.

I would recommend this book (especially as a reflection on the religious antithesis).

So many people wrote great reviews of GKC's best-known books here that I'll concentrate on this one. It happens to be my favorite novel by him, but I was quite surprised that this nearly unknown book would be so good. My suggestion is don't read Martin Gardner's foreword first--read it as a backword, after the book, and then see if you agree.

Chesterton later wrote a little poem about how he didn't like this book, and how it didn't make any sense, but I found it to be the clearest thing I've ever read, and it has forever instilled lucid pictures in my brain. It starts with a scene that seems to be some sort of dizzying science-fiction story from Victorian England--sort of like something Jules Verne would write if he suddenly became a better writer.

That's not the only unforgettable visual image in this book, which is pieced together like so many cliff-hanger serials. Someone else will likely write about all the debates over points of view implicit in the title and fiercely held by the characters, but what attracts me is the excitement of a widly heroic life (which both characters live). GK shows, of course, that it's found in the romance of orthodoxy, but by the time the book winds up, he has me panting like a thirsty horse to find those cooling streams.

Another novel that does this is Manalive!, which a friend of mine said is her second favorite book, next to C.S.Lewis' Perelandra. Manalive! is very light, but it just flies, and opens with the most intriguing first page I've ever read. Both these stories, although written in different ways, seem modern or even post-modern. They seem like they were translated into modern English from another language, even though they both date from the early 20th Century.

Recently, I had the chance to see the world premiere of a play of The Man Who Was Thursday, which put these three novels into perspective for me. Chesterton wrote at a time when anarchist dynamiters --the terrorists of their day--were causing havoc about London. Many social conditions were chaotic and in the world of ideas, things were up for grabs.

Chesterton did not have an easy conversion, nor did he come by his views without a hard-won struggle. In this sense, he didn't arrive at the "right" answer by working a puzzle or stumbling on the secret to life, but like his story about a man who walked around the world, came back with a new perspective, able to see things in a new way for the first time. Although I did come to embrace his romantic orthodoxy, I don't think his big gift is in convincing us of the wisdom of the Creed, but rather in opening our eyes to the wonder around us.

That's what my 17 year old tutoring student told me this week. He's been quoting the book around school and is absolutely enchanted with it. Note, this kid is no slouch intellectually, he's on the state championship debate team and has read such things as Dante's Inferno, and Huxley's Brave New World, so the best thing he's ever read is high praise.

I think what makes this book so good is the paradoxical quality of the situation. The action carries you forward as the two main characters attempt to duel about truth and are continually thwarted by a constabulary and a citizenship who don't (for the most part, that is) want them to fight. The paradox is that these men are sane, but the world thinks them mad. It reminds one of Emily Dickinson's poem "Much Madness is divinest Sense"
and the society the characters are in does deem them dangerous.

What is amazing to me is that Chesterton wrote this book in 1905, but it could almost have been written yesterday, at least in terms of people's attitudes. The descriptions are unusual, some of the people quite odd, yet the whole story becomes believable in a very strange way. And it is both intriguing and amusing at the same time.

This is the second teenager I've recommended this to and both of them have loved it. Maybe the teenagers I know just have better taste than most of the librarians out there, since this is a nearly impossible book to find on any library shelves around here. Thanks Amazon for making it so easy to purchase. I've just ordered a copy for my teenaged niece for her birthday. Maybe the American Chesterton Society should start a branch for teens...

A crime has occurred, often (though not always) a murder. As authorities and observers attempt to solve the mystery, often arriving at a false solution, meekly in the background is a humble, unassuming priest. Using his knowledge of the criminal mind, and often bringing to bear theology (because unsound theology is the basis of moral failure), the unnoticed priest arrives at the solution. Each time one comes to the end of these short mysteries, the reader realizes that there is some small detail that he or she missed, which was not missed by Father Brown. Thus is displayed the power of quiet observation. These short stories make for some good bedtime reading, and even profound theological reflection. The only reason I gave this volume four stars instead of five is that mystery is not personally my favorite genre. Even non-mystery lovers can enjoy these stories much as I have.

In the genre of the finely crafted English detective story, Chesterton's "Father Brown" stories are wholesome and stimulating detective tales surpassed by few others, except perhaps Doyle's legendary Sherlock Holmes. In contrast to the arrogant Holmes, however, Chesterton's protagonist is rather quiet, unassuming and modest, and makes an unlikely hero - a catholic priest. Father Brown's simple manner makes you quick to underestimate him, but the startling flashes of brilliance that spill from beneath his humble exterior soon make you realize that he has a firm grasp on the truth of a situation when you are as yet frustratingly distant from it. His perceptive one-liners make it evident that he has a clear insight into something that you see only as an apparently insoluble paradox.

Chesterton has been called the "prince of paradox", and the Father Brown stories are a clear testimony of his fondness for paradox. Ultimately it is not just crimes that Brown must solve, but the paradox underlying them. In fact, not all stories are crime stories - among them are mysterious situations that do not involve criminals, and it is the perceptive insight of Father Brown that is needed make apparent contradictions comprehensible by his ruthless logic. Father Brown is not so much concerned with preserving life or bringing a criminal to justice as he is with unravelling the strands of an impossible paradox. In fact, Chesterton's conception of Father Brown is itself a paradox - both a cleric and a crime-fighter, a priest and a policeman, a representative of God's mercy and an instrument of God's justice, a proclaimer of forgiveness and a seeker of guilt, a listener in the confessional and a questioner in the interrogation.

How a priest could possibly play the role of a detective is explained in the first story, "The Blue Cross". Brown apprehends the confounded criminal Flambeau and explains that his knowledge of the criminal mind is due in part to what he's heard at the confessional booth "We can't help being priests. People come and tell us these things." When Flambeau retorts "How in blazes do you know all these horrors?" Chesterton allows his humble priest to attribute his insight into human depravity to his experience as a priest: "Oh, by being a celibate simpleton, I suppose, he said. Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hear men's real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil."

But both Chesterton and Father Brown have insight into much more than just human depravity - they are both champions of Catholic orthodoxy. This gives the Father Brown stories a depth not found in Brown's compatriot Holmes. In the course of Chesterton's stories, we are treated to philosophical discussions about catholic theology, such as the relationship between faith and reason. We do not merely meet an assortment of cobblers, blacksmiths, magistrates and generals, but atheists, legalists, secularists, pagans, Presbyterians, Puritans, Protestants and Catholics, all with varying and vying affections for superstition, naturalism, rationalism, scepticism, agnosticism, materialism, anarchism, nihilism, or cynicism. Along with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, G.K. Chesterton was one of the few writers in the twentieth century that made an important contribution to English literature that was stamped by Christian principles instead of the prevailing secularism of the day.

Readers who do not share Chesterton's theological convictions will not concur with all his insights, but they must concede that they are enjoyable, profound and stimulating. Somewhat surprising is the occasional use of blasphemous expletives such as "O my God", although generally from the mouths of others than Father Brown himself. And Brown does seem to degenerate more and more into a mouthpiece for Chesterton, with a sermonizing tone not present in the first stories.

But on the whole these are exemplary models of the English crime short story. The Penguin edition contains all the stories from all five of Chesterton's published Father Brown collections. Among my favorites are "The Blue Cross", where Father Brown follows a mysterious trail of clues and engages in some bizarre behaviour and fascinating theological discourse to apprehend Flambeau. "The Hammer of God" is also an outstanding whodunnit, as Brown solves the murder of a man who has been crushed by a huge hammer outside a church, seemingly the recipient of a divine thunderbolt of judgment from heaven. In the process Chesterton shares some thought-provoking insights, such as the memorable: "Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak." Also unforgettable is "The Blast of the Book", which recounts the mysterious disappearance of five men whose only crime was to open a seemingly magical book. Father Brown is quick to unravel the paradox by explaining it as the work of an ingenious prankster.

Father Brown's tongue never fails to produce profound paradoxical gems such as "The point of the pin was that it was pointless." And: "I never should have thought he would be so illogical as to die in order to avoid death." It is Brown's unique perspective that allows him to see what others do not see. When his compatriots are awed at the eloquence of a magistrate's thundering sermon in "the Mirror of the Magistrate", Father Brown remarks: "I think the thing that struck me most was how different men look in their wigs. You talk about the prosecuting barrister being so tremendous. But I happened to see him take his wig off for a minute, and he really looks quite a different man. He's quite bald, for one thing."

With the finely crafted prose, depth of theological insight, and brilliant combination of perception and paradox, Chesterton has created in Father Brown a noble and enduring character, a worthy successor to Sherlock Holmes and in some respects his equal and superior. The Father Brown stories are unquestionably worthy of their designation as classics.

Father Brown is an intriguing and refreshing fictional detective. In addition to providing short glimpses into criminal puzzles, this book includes fascinating looks at the time period in which it was written (Father Brown meets the Futurists). Much more intelligent than many of the other entries into this genre, it also wasn't as dogmatically religious as I'd been lead to believe. I really enjoyed this book.

"Orthodoxy" is described by Chesterton as "a slovenly autobiography", a description that's really not too far off the mark. Instead of depending upon rigorous logic, the contents of this work are rather "mental pictures" of a sort, which is what the author states at the outset. This sort of approach is easy to attack by any contrarian skeptic, but I can't criticize Chesterton, as he and I are really cut from the same cloth. Loath to state the obvious, we both prefer to *illustrate* the truth via induction. This is a perfectly valid method of presenting ideas, it's just that it's easy to misunderstand and misrepresent. It's for this reason that this book probably wouldn't change someone's mind-kind of a litmus test for the open-minded, which, it turns out, self-proclaimed 'skeptics' or 'freethinkers' are anything but.

Chesterton makes two really good points throughout the book: 1) sanity lies in maintaining seemingly opposed extremes in a kind of dramatic tension. It's not balance, it's both at once. It's not a contradiction, it's a paradox. Christianity fits this like nothing else: singularity/plurality, freedom/servanthood, individuality/assimilation, etc., all are fused together in seeming contradiction of common sense. But don't we always find truth to be stranger than fiction? In contrast, monomania is a kind of insanity, like total belief in oneself, or the belief that one unfalsifiable human construct, like evolution, completely illuminates everything. 2) The importance of maintaining a kind of humble childlike wonder about the world, the universe, about existence itself. What if you saw a four-inch-long fully-functional helicopter hovering about? Wouldn't that be delightfully incredible? Not too long ago, after reading this book, it dawned on me, upon observing a dragonfly, that that was precisely what I was looking at. I'm not even talking about creationism, irreducible complexity, any of that. It is in fact, neither here nor there. Just the fact that such a marvelous thing should exist, by any means, is truly stupendous. It should inspire deeper thought about fundamental issues. The modern-day 'scientific' priesthood is perpetually at pains to systematically dismantle the ability to see things this way even as they proclaim it superficially.

The funny thing about Chesterton's writing is that he gets so wrapped up in his ideas that rather strange-sounding, apparent non-sequiturs come up every so often. A sample Chestertonism: "As a fact, anthropophagy [cannibalism] is certainly a decadent thing, not a primitive one. It is much more likely that modern men will eat human flesh out of affectation, than that primitive man ate it out of ignorance." Well, duh!? As in his Father Brown mysteries, Chesterton loves to toss off sweeping statements, and is a bit too shy of explicating his ideas with the utmost clarity sometimes; chalk it up to slovenliness, I guess.But for the most part his ideas are sound and his writing thought-provoking.

Portly, fun loving, witty G.K. Chesterton decided to write this book as a companion volume to his book HERETICS. Since HERETICS had criticised contemporary philosophies, ORTHODOXY was written to present an alternative viewpoint, and is therefore both affirmative in tone and autobiographical in many places. A sampling of his chapter titles gives some idea of Chesterton's sense of fun as well as his unusual approach to the matter of Christianity. Chapter one is "In Defense of Everything Else" (one pictures Chesterton with a whimsical, impish smile on his face as he wrote this). There are also chapters on "The Suicide of Thought", "The Ethics of Elfland" (a really superb chapter), "The Maniac", and "The Paradoxes of Christianity". In this easily readable book (only 160 pages in the small paperback edition), Chesterton shows that theological reflections and philosophical ruminations need be neither boring nor incomprehensible. This was jolly good fun to read, being both funny and intellectually stimulating. Highly recommended.

I think this book is one of the greatest apologies for the Christian faith ever penned; possibly even better than C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity". Rather than attempting to build an airtight logical argument from the ground up in which the reader is forced to accept the premises of Christianity or be logically inconsistent, Chesterton builds his apologetic on the idea of wonder and imagination. He attempts to show that anyone who enjoys an imaginative, romantic, adventure filled life owes it to themself to look into the Christian faith, because this is exactly what it offers. He offers a frank disclaimer at the beginning of the book in which he says that anyone who does not want this kind of life need not read this book because it has nothing to offer them. He constantly attempts to make the reader see the mystery and the glory of normal, everyday things and then argues that Christianity offers the best possible scenario for holding together the mysterious with the mundane. The fact that the book is focused on mystery, romance, and imagination, however, is not to say that Chesterton rejects logic or good critical thinking altogether. To the contrary, he delightfully skewers, slices, and dices the inconsistency and ridiculousness of a great deal of worldly wisdom and the popular thinking of his age, which, as it turns out, does not look all that different from a great deal of the accepted wisdom of our own. Chesterton, however, recognizes that logic has it's limits, and that it cannot fully appeal to or account for all that makes us human. The book is filled with many wonderful passages, and there are parts of the book where it seems like every line you read is a quotable quote. So, with Chesterton's disclaimer in mind, if you are looking for an eminently readable, and unique defense of the Christian faith you owe it to yourself to get this book.
On a final note, I feel the need to respond to the reader who accuses Chesterton of being racist and elitist in this book. I'm wondering if the reader read the same book I did, as I found nothing that I can recall that was racist or elitist at all, and anyone who knows anything about Chesterton at all will know that he was neither of these things. Chesterton was one of the greatest spokesmen of all time for the importance of ordinary people and common values and morality, and, especially in his later life, was an outspoken opponent of racist practices and groups like eugenics and the Nazi party.

Gilbert K. Chesterton's "The Everlasting Man," is more than just a philosophy of history, in fact, it is more than the average run-of-the-mill Christian apologetic as well. It is a work vast in erudition and loaded with sharp witticism. It is a work brimming with insightful logic and religious lore; and it by far surpasses many works of its kind in the twentieth century...possibly since Augustine's "City of God." The book begins upon a paradox: a history of the prehistory of man. Chesterton explains the very genesis of humankind as being strictly human. He expounds upon man's earliest religions from the cave all the way to the Incarnation, which is the central theme to this work. Chesterton also elaborates upon some of the prevalent heresies of the Early Church, shows how the Catholic Church was the church that Christ founded, and ends the book with captavating irony - the five deaths of the Faith...just look for yourself. This book is a timeless classic and a must have.

I've reread this book after ten years and found it just as astonishing a work as I did the first time around. Chesterton is a consummate apologist, combining a sincere reverence for his subject matter with a devastating sense of humour and a true generalist's erudition. He has a wonderful ability of taking accepted secular dogmas, turning them completely on their heads, and in the process making Catholic dogmas, rejected for their lack of congruence with modernism, look sensible and enlightened. This polemical mastery is one of the enduring qualities of "The Everlasting Man".

Although much of the first part of the book may seem dated (it consists mostly of a friendly attack on H.G. Wells anti-Christian "Outline of History") Chesterton's points are still well taken. Many of his musings on evolution can be put to use today against the adherents of creationism as well as the scientifically arrogant. Although he takes 50 pages to say it (he IS a bit of a windbag, but his blustery style and curmudgeonly wit makes it enjoyable all the while), his point about the anthropology of his day is that it is inherently incapable of explaining the irreconcilable chasm between man and the critters he may have materially evolved from. And this difference is constituted by Mind, or by man's soul, as manifested primarily (for Chesterton) in art and religion. One could add science. His illustrations on this point are hilarious. He draws the silly images of cows writing sonatas, sheep practising an elaborate form of ancestor worship, and dogs in solemn procession wearing canine mitres and swinging censors smouldering with dog-appealing scents. All to show the gap that separates us from the animals.

When he moves to specifically Christian apologetics, Chesterton presents a theory of history that, though it bears an obvious resemblance to Augustine's philosophy of history, is remarkably unique and dramatically compelling. The chapter on the war of the gods and demons will assure that you never again think of the Punic Wars in the same way. It also puts to rest much nonsensical multi-culturalist cant.

And indeed this constant struggle, in history, between two supernatural forces permeates Chesterton's sense of history; another similarity to Augustine. However, he is not by any means a Manichean. He is constantly pointing out the marvels of the salvation story and falls prostrate in stricken awe at the very idea of the Incarnation being a fact.

And this is the point of the book; namely, to reinvigorate the awesomeness of that Idea and, more importantly, that Fact, by trying to tell it anew, and by asserting and demonstrating that nothing in modernity or before has ever been able to contradict it, nor to dissuade the millions who have pinned their hope and derived their inspiration from it.

Chesterton is one of the great authors of our time and this book is no exception to the rule. Though I prefered the book St. Thomas Aquinas: the Dumb Ox, by him, The Everlasting Man is none-the-less a fantastic book.

As an answer to G.B. Shaw and H.G. Wells, Chesterton skillfully defends the Catholic and Christian against the modernist attacks which claim that Science and Religion are in conflict. Aquinas would be proud himself of Chersterton's use of Aristotle, who even Darwin claimed to be "the greatest biologist in history".

I highly recommend any Chesterton book to any reader interested in the history of philosophy, theology and man's origens. Also, you don't need a doctorate or a thesaurus to read Chesterton's witty writing.

Adam

This wonderful novel is not a detective story; not an allegory; especially not a work of theology. I haven't the audacity to attempt to define what it is. Chesterton did, however, and it's right there in the title: "A Nightmare". The story unfolds as a dream does, illogically and vividly. I approach it (and I have read it many times) as a prose poem, and a picture painted with words. Certainly it shows GKC's intensely visual imagination, and his ability to create a landscape in the mind. It is also an extended commentary on the Book of Job; in both, a mystery is answered with a greater mystery. Thus the enigmatic ending. GKC was a modern mystic, who saw creation as a pageant to be lived - and loved - rather than a propostion to be solved.

In short a brilliant book, complex, subtle, funny and thought provoking on the inner working of God. Still the main point of this review is for the fools who are calling Chesterton a racist anti-Semitic ect... Just look at the 1 star reviews and you'll see the dribble. These people are A: unaware of Chesterton's close friendship with a Jewish lady named Francis Steinthal who he and his wife dearly loved, and B: quite obviously have never read his other marvelous work "Eugenics and Other Evils." It really makes me wonder why the uneducated are allowed to plague our society with their nonsense. Anyway buy Thursday it's a wonderful and step into Chesterton's genius.

"The Man Who was Thursday" is a fantastic, bizarre puzzle that defies attempts at explanation or description. On the surface, it is a spy story about anarchistic terrorists with elements of suspense and paranoia; as you dig a little deeper, a black comedy emerges; peeling back a few more layers reveals a philosophical underbelly; and it all ends in an uproariously enigmatic denouement worthy of Lewis Carroll. If the book is, as its subtitle indicates, a nightmare, we all should hope to have dreams as sweet as this.

The hero, Gabriel Syme, is a poet-detective (yes, seriously) who works for a special branch of Scotland Yard dedicated to apprehending "intellectual" criminals, particularly anarchists, because they tend to be the most subversive and therefore the most dangerous. By operating undercover as a poet-anarchist, Syme manages to infiltrate the seven-member Central Anarchist Council, who alias themselves using the names of the days of the week, and fills the vacant slot of "Thursday." The Council's main directive is to cast the world into chaos by assassinating heads of state, and their current plan, as masterminded by their president, "Sunday," is to bomb the upcoming meeting of the Russian Czar and the French president in Paris.

It is, of course, up to Syme/Thursday, who is always at risk of being exposed as a policeman, to put a stop to this nefarious scheme, to which there is naturally more than meets the eye. As the plot unfolds, it breaks down (or builds up) into an indescribably wild farce; Syme's mission turns into a picaresque adventure of disguises, a swordfight, and several chases -- involving horses, cars, an elephant, and a hot-air balloon. At the end of the book, a surprise is waiting; a strange detachment from everything that has preceded it, which slyly lets the reader in on its symbolic joke. If not for its relentlessly silly tone and idiosyncratic resolution, "The Man Who was Thursday" could be a perfect sister novel to Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent."

Like fellow British wits Dickens, Wodehouse, and Waugh, Chesterton is that rare sort of writer who is skilled in combining breathtaking narrative with irreverent and intelligent comedy and whose prose is as poetical as it is humorous. The fact that Kingsley Amis called this novel the "most thrilling" book he'd ever read speaks volumes.

The obvious (and probably most common) comparison is to Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent." Both explore anarchy and revolution and have at their centers double agents. In many ways, though, the two works don't compare. Conrad's work is much darker; his London is infinitely bleaker and grosser than Chesterton's. Indeed, Conrad spends much more time describing his settings and creating the dark mood. Moreover, Conrad is more concerned than Chesterton with the psychological motivations underlying anarchy. These are not at all shortcomings in Chesterton's brilliant work; the two writers, each excellent in their own ways, simply focused on different things and had different goals and lessons to teach.

On its surface, "The Man Who Was Thursday" is the tale of a detective who infiltrates the inner circle of a group of anarchists and assumes a position on its board, whose seven members all bear names of days of the week. Syme, the detective, is Thursday; the mysterious, enigmatic leader is Sunday. Much of the fun of this book is in the twists and turns, so I won't give anything away. Some of the surprises (or revelation) are predictable, but many are not, and one typically builds on all the rest--keeping even the most predictable of them fresh and intriguing. At a deeper level, Chesterton explores the nature of good and evil, of fate and free will, of order and chaos, and also of faith. Indeed, Chesterton's vision of Christianity penetrates his work, sometimes explicitly (particularly the concluding chapters) and often implicitly and more symbolically. It underlies much of the book.

"Thursday" is a difficult book to understand, and the allegory is not easy to see or decipher. This is certainly a book that deserves many re-readings. On this note, Martin Gardner's introduction and notes provide a great framework for beginning to penetrate the book's deeper meanings. Moreover, his descriptions of the relevant geography and landmarks of London prove both helpful and fascinating.

This is a true masterpiece, unfortunately overlooked by far too many who have never heard of Chesterton or who don't know he wrote excellent fiction in addition to his fine Christian apologetics. Anyone stands to profit from reading "The Man Who Was Thursday." And this edition only enhances the experience.

If you have never read this book, DO IT NOW! And buy this copy. For just a little more than the paperback, you get Gardner's notes which help to shed some light on the neighborhoods of London and Chesterton's story. I was not familiar with the layout of London and his annotations gave some interesting facts and tidbits. Also, this is a hard text to tackle and Gardner's thoughts help introduce new ways to understand Chesterton's work.

Definition is impossible : The Man Who was Thursday is not quite a political bad dream, nor a metaphysical thriller, nor a cosmic joke in the form of a spy novel, but it is something of all three. What it has most of is a boys' adventure story, which might help to explain my early excitement but not so much my continuing devotion. And what a title! I will not divulge its meaning here, but I cannot resist saying that anybody who at the sight of it does not feel a faint tingle of excitement and a breath of wonder is not really a fit person to be reading the book. -Kingsley Amis, Introduction to the Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics version

G. K. Chesterton's classic novel manages to provide a thriller that starts out like a Sherlock Holmes adventure and ends like Raiders of the Lost Ark, while at the same time offering a profound contemplation of the existence of evil in the world, the role of free will in the universe, the willingness of God to allow Man to suffer, and various other vexing metaphysical questions. Both the basic story and the religious philosophy are exciting, and though generations of readers have complained that the final chapter is too difficult to follow, the Annotated version has explanatory essays by Martin Gardner and there's an excellent essay of his available online, which do a great job of explaining just what Chesterton is up to. It is very much a Christian fantasy (or "Nightmare" to use Chesterton's own subtitle) but can be read with enjoyment by anyone who loves a good adventure yarn and doesn't mind being made to think.

GRADE : A-