The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lincoln at Gettysburg and Papal Sin captures the many dimensions of one of the twentieth century's most influential writers.
Part of a literary circle that included H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Hillaire Belloc, and Max Beerbohm, G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) wrote essays of social criticism for contemporary journals, literary criticism (including notable books on Browning, Dickens, and Shaw), and works of theology and religious argument, but may have been best known for his Father Brown mysteries. Chesterton's interest in Catholic Christianity, first expressed in Orthodoxy, led to his conversion from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism in 1922. His classic Saint Francis of Assisi and the equally acclaimed Saint Thomas Aquinas confirmed his reputation as a writer with the rare ability to simultaneously entertain, inform, and enlighten readers. This revised edition of Garry Wills's finely crafted biography includes updates to the text and a new Introduction by the author.
Garry Wills
About Garry Wills
Garry Wills is an adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University. Wills received a Ph.D. in classics from Yale and has had a distinguished career as an author, with books such as Lincoln at Gettysburg, John Wayne's America, a biography of St. Augustine, and A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government. He has received numerous accolades, including the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction (for Lincoln at Gettysburg) and the NEH Presidential Medal.
Wills is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and his articles appear frequently in The New York Review of Books.