Most Popular Books by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The Ball and the Cross is a novel by G. K. Chesterton. The title refers to a more worldly and rationalist worldview, represented by a ball or sphere, and the cross representing Christianity. The first chapters of the book were serialized from 1905 to 1906 with the completed work published in 1909. The novel''s beginning involves debates about rationalism and religion between a Professor Lucifer and a monk named Michael. A part of this section was quoted in Pope John Paul I''s Illustrissimi letter to G. K. Chesterton. Much of the rest of the book concerns the dueling, figurative and somewhat more literal, of a Jacobite Catholic named Maclan and an atheist Socialist named Turnbull. Lynette Hunter has argued that the novel is more sympathetic to Maclan, but does indicate Maclan is also presented as in some ways too extreme

Donated by Sydney Harris.

The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton is an ongoing project, edited by many of the most prominent Chesterton scholars in the world, including Dale Ahlquist, Denis Conlon, George Marlin, Lawrence Clipper, and many others. These handsome editions include explanatory footnotes, introductory essays, and much more.

Father Brown is a seemingly innocent man of the cloth, whimsical yet wise, who exhibits uncanny insight into ingeniously tricky human problems. This collection includes twelve mysteries solved by the redoubtable Father Brown.

The Man Who Knew Too Much and other stories (1922) is a book of detective stories by English writer G. K. Chesterton, published in 1922 by Cassell and Company in the United Kingdom, and Harper Brothers in the United States.[1][2][3][4] The book contains eight connected short stories about "The Man Who Knew Too Much", and additional unconnected stories featuring separate heroes/detectives. The United States edition contained one of these additional stories: "The Trees of Pride", while the United Kingdom edition contained "Trees of Pride" and three more, shorter stories: "The Garden of Smoke", "The Five of Swords" and "The Tower of Treason".

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.

A unique collection of 10 of the best of Chesterton''s famous Fr. Brown mysteries, this book''s focus is on the stories that emphasize the role of Brown''s Catholic faith in helping solve the murders. This is a special deluxe edition.

Utopia of Usurers is a classic collection of political essays which comment upon the conditions of Great Britain by G.K. Chesterton. What is it that angers Chesterton and fills him with grim forebodings for the future of his island? Many things and, especially, many persons. But chiefly the capitalists, the upper middle class, the usurers, or however they be termed, and the fear of the servile state, the state in which art and literature and science and efficiency and morality and everything else that has value in the eyes of mortal man become the humble servants of the money-changers, in short, the "utopia of usurers." --The Dial, 1918.

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.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 - 14 June 1936) was one of the most influential English writers of the 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." 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." For example, Chesterton wrote the following: Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. Chesterton is well known for his reasoned apologetics and even those who disagree with him have recognized the universal appeal of such works as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. Chesterton, as political thinker, 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. Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an "orthodox" Christian, and came to identify such a position with Catholicism more and more, eventually converting to Roman Catholicism. George Bernard Shaw, Chesterton''s "friendly enemy" according to Time, said of him, "He was a man of colossal genius".