The Everlasting Man

G.K. Chesterton

In honor of my upcoming trip to Sweden (more on that later), I began to re-read Hammer of God. In the Preface to Hammer of God, G.K. Chesterton's book The Man Who Was Thursday was mentioned as "urgent reading." While I had "read in" Chesterton before (after all, he has some great quotes), I really haven't read him before. You can read all about G.K. Chesterton in Wikipedia. Apparently, the man was most often seen with either a cigar or a pencil in his hand.

This afternoon I had several yard projects to do -- mulching, bush trimming, grass cutting (which finished just before 9 PM with the tractor lights on), and other tasks. When doing such outdoor work, I like to listen to books. The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton was available as a free audiobook download. 

The Everlasting Man, first published in 1925, is a response or reaction to H.G. Well's Outline of History, in particular to Well's view of both history and his evolutionary approach to man. The Everlasting Man is a two-part history: man before Christ, beginning with the so-called "cave man" and man after Christ. In response to evolution, Chesterton's basic thesis is that if man is just an animal, he is an extraordinary animal. Ironically, despite being 86 years old, Chesterton has both cogent and witty arguments against modernism.

You can read more about The Everlasting Man at Wikipedia and download the text here from Gutenberg Austrialia, or see an embedded PDF below the audio.

If you care to listen to the book, you can download the audio from here or listen to it stream below:

Everlasting Man