Tremendous Trifles

The thirty-nine short essays that make up Chesterton's delightful book are the result of "sitting still and letting marvels and adventures settle on him like flies.'' Actually, the author does move around quite a bit-to Germany, France, and on foot in England when he tires of waiting for a train. Everywhere he goes, Chesterton looks at ordinary things and asks us to see how extraordinary they are: the contents of his pockets, the items in a railway station, pedestrians in the street. What appear to be trifles are actually tremendous, and he uses them as a springboard to expound on Christianity, the nuclear family, democracy and the like, with supreme clarity and wit.