The Well and the Shallows, by G.K. Chesterton

Chesterton is always fun, and so I picked up this, a book I’d not seen before, with glee when I ran into it on a business trip a couple of months ago. It’s his last book, a collection of essays originally published in various Catholic magazines.

I enjoyed it, but can only recommend it to the Chesterton completist, as most of the essays are much more dated than the best of his books. He frequently refers to events, celebrities, and controversies of the day, and though I’ve got some notion of the 1920’s and 1930’s there were many references I found completely obscure. Those new to Chesterton would do better to start with The Everlasting Man or Orthodoxy or The Man Who Was Thursday instead.