Best Selling Books by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

So it was, certainly, with the Bastille. The destruction of the Bastille was not a reform; it was something more important than a reform. It was an iconoclasm; it was the breaking of a stone image. The people saw the building like a giant looking at them with a score of eyes, and they struck at it as at a carved fact. For of all the shapes in which that immense illusion called materialism can terrify the soul, perhaps the most oppressive are big buildings. Man feels like a fly, an accident, in the thing he has himself made. It requires a violent effort of the spirit to remember that man made this confounding thing and man could unmake it.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill is a novel written by G. K. Chesterton in 1904, set in a nearly-unchanged London in 1984.Though the novel deals with the future, it concentrates not on technology nor on totalitarian government but on a government where no one cares what happens, comparable to Fahrenheit 451 in that respect.The dreary succession of randomly selected Kings of England is broken up when Auberon Quin, who cares for nothing but a good joke, is chosen. To amuse himself, he institutes elaborate costumes for the provosts of the districts of London. All are bored by the King''s antics except for one earnest young man who takes the cry for regional pride seriously - Adam Wayne, the eponymous Napoleon of Notting Hill.While the novel is humorous (one instance has the King sitting on top of an omnibus and speaking to it as to a horse: "Forward, my beauty, my Arab," he said, patting the omnibus encouragingly, "fleetest of all thy bounding tribe"), it is also an adventure story: Chesterton is not afraid to let blood be drawn in his battles, fought with sword and halberd in the London streets, and Wayne thinks up a few ingenious strategies; and, finally, the novel is philosophical, considering the value of one man''s actions and the virtue of respect for one''s enemies.

Before he has turned over half-a-dozen pages of Mr. Chesterton''s book, the reader will feel as if he had been out in a high wind. Not, of course, the cold, steady-blowing north-easter that turns your clothes to paper, that blues your nose and finger-tips and temper. Never for one moment could the storm that rages between the covers of Eugenics and Other Evils be likened to that sort of thing. The book is chiefly concerned to oppose the segregation of the feeble-minded, and the principal argument brought forward by Mr. Chesterton is that, in the case of the proposed and current legislation about feeble-mindedness, wc are treating this state in exactly the same way as we treat lunacy, whereas, says he, insanity is a definite state, "an isolated thing like leprosy." There is an abysmal distance between the lunatic and the ordinary man, but when we come to feeble-mindedness there is no such line of demarcation.

This is the first edition of Chesterton''s masterpiece, The Man Who Was Thursday, that explicates and enriches the complete text with extensive footnotes, together with an introductory essay on the metaphysical meaning of Chesterton''s profound allegory. Gardner sees the novel''s anarchists as symbols of our God-given free will, and the mysterious Sunday as representing Nature, with its strange mixture of good and evil when considered as distinct from God, as a mask hiding the transcendental face of the creator. The book also includes a bibliography listing the novel''s many earlier editions and stage dramatizations, as well as numerous illustrations that further illuminate the text.

Includes two essays by Chesterton, "The true romance" and "If Don John of Austria had married Mary, Queen of Scots."

The Everlasting Man, written in 1925, is an insightful and provocative examination of the spiritual history of humankind and of Western civilization. Is man just another animal, a by-product of evolution? Or does he have great purpose and significance? In The Everlasting Man, Chesterton probes this and other questions with humour, wit and insight. This Unabridged and Unedited Large Print Edition includes Prefatory Note, Introduction: The Plan of this Book, The Man in the Cave, Professors and Prehistoric Men, The Antiquity of Civilisation, God and Comparative Religion, Man and Mythologies, Demons and the Philosophers, The War of the Gods and Demons, The End of the World, The God in the Cave, The Riddles of the Gospel, The Strangest Story in the World, The Witness of the Heretics, The Escape from Paganism, The Five Deaths of the Faith, Conclusion: The Summary of this Book, Appendix I: On Prehistoric Man, and Appendix II: On Authority and Accuracy.

Differentiated book* It has a historical context with research of the time-Orthodoxy is an essay by G. K. Chesterton, published in 1908, which has become a classic about Christian apologetics. In it he presents an original vision of the Christian religion, which Chesterton sees as a response to the natural needs of human beings, the "answer to a riddle", and not as an arbitrary truth received from somewhere strange to the human experience. Chesterton considered this book as a companion to his book Heretics. In the preface, the author explains that the purpose of the book is "to try an explanation, not about whether the Christian faith can be believed, but how he came to believe in it."Gilbert Keith Chesterton. London, May 29, 1874-Beaconsfield, June 14, 1936, better known as G. K. Chesterton, was a British writer and journalist of the early twentieth century. He cultivated, among other genres, the essay, the narration, the biography, the lyric, the journalism and the travel book.

A collection of related short stories by British author G. K. Chesterton. Each story is centered on a person who is making his living by some novel and extraordinary means (a "queer trade"). To gain admittance to the Club, one must have a unique queer trade as principal source of income. "Cherub" Swinburne describes his quest for The Club of Queer Trades with his friend Basil Grant, a retired judge, and Rupert Grant, a private detective who is Basil''s younger brother. Each of the stories describes their encounter with one of the trades. In the final story, Rupert Grant rescues a lady from her kidnappers but cannot understand why she refuses to be rescued. The answer leads to the unveiling of the mystery of The Club of Queer Trades. So don''t wait! Scroll up and buy now.

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare is a novel by G. K. Chesterton, first published in 1908. The book has been referred to as a metaphysical thriller. Although it deals with anarchists, the novel is not an exploration or rebuttal of anarchist thought; Chesterton''s ad hoc construction of "Philosophical Anarchism" is distinguished from ordinary anarchism and is referred to several times not so much as a rebellion against government but as a rebellion against God. The novel has been described as "one of the hidden hinges of twentieth-century writing, the place where, before our eyes, the nonsense-fantastical tradition of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear pivots and becomes the nightmare-fantastical tradition of Kafka and Borges.

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare is a novel by G. K. Chesterton, first published in 1908. The book has been referred to as a metaphysical thriller.Although it deals with anarchists, the novel is not an exploration or rebuttal of anarchist thought; Chesterton''s ad hoc construction of "Philosophical Anarchism" is distinguished from ordinary anarchism and is referred to several times not so much as a rebellion against government but as a rebellion against God.

Light-hearted work introduces Innocent Smith, a bubbly, eccentric gentleman of questionable character, into the lives of a group of young disillusioned people -- and the result is inspired, high-spirited nonsense.

Widely considered as Chesterton''s masterpiece, The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) defies classification. Subtitled `A Nightmare'' by Chesterton, on one level it is a fast-moving and surreal detective story. This critical edition includes several short related pieces, `A Picture of Tuesday'', `The Book of Job'', and `The Diabolist'', as well as a map of Edwardian London and detailed explanatory notes. - ;Widely considered as Chesterton''s masterpiece, The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) defies classification. Subtitled `A Nightmare'' by Chesterton, on one level it is a fast-moving and surreal detective stor.