All Things Considered

About the book

Chesterton gathers short essays on subjects as different as political secrecy, fairy tales, wealth, jokes, literary judgments, and the business of chasing a hat blown away by the wind. The changing occasions are held together by a habit of reversing familiar assumptions: a minor inconvenience can disclose an attitude toward adventure, while a respectable slogan can conceal an absurdity. His defense of ordinary pleasures sits beside vigorous disagreement with fashionable intellectual and social claims. These pieces retain the immediacy of journalism, addressing controversies and public habits rather than building a systematic treatise. Their pleasure lies partly in the movement of the argument itself, as a concrete example opens into a larger question about freedom, judgment, or common life.

• Everyday wonder
• Public argument
• Convention and paradox

Why read it

Read it for short essays in which a lively objection or ordinary mishap can change the scale of an argument.

English text