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Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was a British writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary critic. Chesterton wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, several plays, plus 4,000 essays and newspaper columns. He was a columnist for the Daily News and The Illustrated London News.

In 1917, G.K. Chesterton published an essay in response to an English minister’s objection to people sending cigarettes to British soldiers fighting in the trenches of World War I, titled "The Dregs of Puritanism". He writes that a large number of young men were being hurt by shells, bullets, fever, hunger and horror of hope deferred. The “good reverend”, however, was anxious that they should not be hurt by cigarettes.

Begun in the mid-16th century by Protestant nonconformists keen to reform England's church and society while saving their own souls, the puritan movement was a major catalyst in the great cultural changes that transformed the early modern world. Providing a uniquely broad transatlantic perspective, this groundbreaking volume traces puritanism's tumultuous history from its initial attempts to reshape the Church of England to its establishment of godly republics in both England and America, and its demise at the end of the 17th century.