Branches to Heaven: The Geniuses of C.S. Lewis

One of the twentieth century's most widely read writers and its most influential Christian apologist, C.S. Lewis has nevertheless eluded the understanding of the numerous scholars who have approached him only as a religious thinker and man of letters. A new book by a leading Lewis authority explores the full range of his manifold genius and finds for the first time the surprising secret of Lewis's enduring literary and spiritual achievement. It will astonish Lewis's admirers and critics alike to learn that he was far from the settled convert he appeared to be. Yet this very unsettledness, which Lewis himself found alarming, was the source of the appealing tension in his work and of his unrelenting commitment to his apologetic vocation. It was in the service of this vocation that he exercised his overarching rhetorical genius-a dazzling adroitness at suiting word, voice, and argument to a particular purpose-always militant, compelling, and persuasive. As Professor Como explores Lewis's hitherto uncharted inner landscape-the core of both his spiritual insight and his intellectual greatness-there emerges a more complex and integrated figure than we have known before. The publication of Branches to Heaven coincides with the centenary of Lewis's birth, an occasion of heightened attention to Lewis and his work throughout the English-speaking world. It is available with a companion volume from Spence Publishing, C.S. Lewis: Memories and Reflections by John Lawlor, a moving and insightful account of the author's thirty-year friendship with Lewis.