The Outline of Sanity is an entertaining book — it will make you laugh. It is an engaging book — it will make you think. And it is an inspiring book — it will make you want to read more and do more.
It is this last quality which really sets the Outline apart from the mass of books on the otherwise dry topics of socialism, capitalism, and the economic order. For this is a book that Chesterton wrote not as a theoretical examination of socialist principles or capitalist hypotheses. He wrote it as a lively and common-sense — but nonetheless rigorous — examination of how both of the “isms” really work in the day-to-day world. He looked at the effect they had on families, homes, men. He did economics as if “economics” still had something to do with households.
The Outline is not just an uncompromising look at the economic side of modern society by a keenly intelligent and brutally honest writer. It is an introduction to the alternative perspective, one that transcends the Socialist/Capitalist dichotomy and offers a vision of an economic order which, rather than dominating man, actually serves him.
You’ll have to buy the book to hear more. It is guaranteed not-to-disappoint. Whether you are a serious Catholic seeking the Catholic answer to today’s problems, or merely an open-minded, socially-conscious reader who is not afraid to think about an alternative to the corporate rat race and government bureaucracy — The Outline of Sanity will give you a glimpse of that Distributist vision which offers the average man and woman a way out of the insanity of the current system.
Preface —The Publishers
I. Some General Ideas
1. The Beginning of the Quarrel
2. The Peril of the Hour
3. The Chance of Recovery
4. On A Sense of Proportion
II. Some Aspects of Big Business
1. The Bluff of the Big Shops
2. A Misunderstanding About Method
3. A Case in Point
4. The Tyranny of Trusts
III. Some Aspects of the Land
1. The Simple Truth
2. Vows and Volunteers
3. The Real Life on the Land
IV. Some Aspects of Machinery
1. The Wheel of Fate
2. The Romance of Machinery
3. The Holiday of the Slave
4. The Free Man and the Ford Car
V. A Note on Emigration
1. The Need of A New Spirit
2. The Religion of Small Property
VI. A Summary