Books: Orthodoxologist

GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON—Maisie Ward—Sheed & Ward ($4.50).

"People," said the late, large Gilbert Keith Chesterton, "have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. . . . It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own."

How Chesterton chose to keep his own head is the theme of Maisie Ward's intimate biography. Biographer...