Mere Christianity by Lewis, C. S - 1952

New York: The Macmillan Company, 1952. First US edition, first printing. Octavo. Original blue cloth with silver titling and original dust jacket (not price-clipped). Minor sunning to spine and board edges, with edgewear to boards and minor fraying to bottom spine; small chips to front and spine of dust jacket; small closed tears to dust jacket, including a one-inch closed tear at foot of front jacket; faint sunning to spine with sticker scar at bottom spine. Very good first printing of this first US edition.. First printing of the first US edition of C. S. Lewis's (1898-1963) classic work of Christian apologetics-a work widely counted among the most influential of the twentieth century. Mere Christianity was born from a series of live fifteen-minute radio talks that Lewis gave for the BBC during World War II. At a time when the moral and religious fabric of the modern world seemed torn asunder by the unrelenting brutality of war and strife, Lewis's radio talks gave hope to thousands, and his gift for translating complex religious thought into a common vernacular brought many more into the Church. Throughout his broadcasts Lewis addressed the central issues of Christianity and set forth a rational case for religious belief. So successful were Lewis's broadcasts that his voice was said to be as recognizable in England as that of Winston Churchill. The BBC broadcasts were eventually assembled into Mere Christianity, which was first published in the US by The Macmillan Company in 1952. Mere Christianity has since become one of the most celebrated and recognized evangelical works in print. Like other timeless works of the genre, including G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy (1909), Mere Christianity moves to the heart of religious belief, transcending denominational boundaries to elucidate the joys and truth of "mere" Christianity. Identified by National Review as one of the 100 greatest non-fiction books of the twentieth century.