Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton: The Illustrated London News, 1920-1922 [Paperback]

G. K. Chesterton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1989 | Series: Collected Works of Gk Chesterton

Volumes XXVII through XXXVII of The Collected Works Of G. K. Chesterton are columns from The Illustrated London News. These volumes contain all of Chesterton s weekly columns beginning in 1905. Volume XXXII contains 1920-1922. Though written for his very popular newspaper column almost ninety years ago, Chesterton s timeless wisdom is just as relevant today as it was then. The 130 columns in Volume XXXII include The Fashion of Psychoanalysts, Doubts about Darwinism, Liberty and Self Government, Errors About Detective Stories, The Settling of America, Popular Literature and Popular Science, Marxism and History, The Threat of Novelty, The Infinite Variety of Woman, The Soul of the Modern Peasant, Gilbert and the Jingoists, and Socialist Order and Democracy. Author: G. K. Chesterton Contents: Columns from Illustrated London News, 1920-1922 Format: 700 pages, paperback Publisher: Ignatius Press ISBN: 9780898702446

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Ignatius Pr (November 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898702445
• ISBN-13: 978-0898702446
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #304,875 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More Rare Treasures from GKC, November 21, 2005

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This review is from: Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton: The Illustrated London News, 1920-1922 (Paperback)

These 3-5 page editorials cover the usual wide range of social, political, historical, literary and moral topics GK wrote about with so much gusto. As an added bonus, this volume contains about five months-worth of wonderful essays written by Hilaire Belloc, who pinch-hit while GK was traveling.

Rather than make a feeble attempt to summarize the brilliance and scope of these essays, I'll take just one as an example, April 1, 1922. In just a few pages, GK deals with business ethics, excessive societal legalism, science versus religion, the breakdown of law and order, moral chaos, the dangers of bureaucracy, and the dangers of amorally applied science--all in a way that is completely relevant today. Some quotes...

"...for the modern man is in favour of introducing order into everything except his own ideas."

"...it is just as possible to organise slackness as to organize efficiency..."

"It is much nearer the truth to say that they [the police] fail because society is being far too much organised. A scheme of official control which is too ambitious for human life has broken down...instead of law being a strong cord to bind what it is really possible to bind, it has become a thin net to cover what it is quite impossible to cover."

"The truth is that any advance in science leaves morality in its ancient balance; and it depends still on the inscrutable soul of man whether any discovery is mainly a benefit or mainly a calamity. This is, perhaps, the strongest argument for a morality superior to materialism, and a religion that refuses to be bullied by science."

"For mind as much as machinery depends for its good or evil not on its force, but on its direction."

Well worth contemplating eighty years later!