This is a simply amazing book, and one that I’m having great difficulty
reviewing. When reviewing a non-fiction book, I like to summarize the
book’s argument. That’s absurdly difficult in this case, because the
book is almost embarassingly rich–is almost bigger on the inside than on
the outside. I think I’m going to need to re-read it every couple of
months for the indefinite future if I’m to do it justice.

Anyway, here’s what it’s about (as opposed to what’s in it). Chesterton
wrote a book called Heretics in which he described several of
the prominent thinkers of his day and the world-views they espoused, and
pointed out the weaknesses and failings of the latter. A critic of the
book declared that it was unfair for Chesterton to deal so with his
subjects without giving them the opportunity to criticize his own
world-view. Chesterton was always willing to plunge cheerfully into
battle, and wrote the current book in answer.

Just as Surprised by Joy describes C.S. Lewis’s
personal journey of faith so this book describes Chesterton’s, and with
great humor. Indeed, the whole book can be described as an enormous
joke on Chesterton himself. As a young man he rejected Christian orthodoxy, and
became a freethinker. And as he examined each school of thought proposed
by the freethinkers before him, he found that it wouldn’t answer.
Rejecting each of them, he boldly struck out on his own, and attempted to
devise his own system of thought that commended itself to his reason and
his common sense. And when he had completed it, and saw that it was good,
he discovered that he had reinvented Christian orthodoxy.

There now, I think I’ve adequately described the premise of and occasion
for the book; it’s the content that’s hard to summarize. I’ll have to
read it again.

In the meantime, I suggest you take a look at this
essay, which undoubtedly does a better job of introducing the book
than I have.