Walter Hooper, the executor of C.S.

Lewis’ literary estate maintained that The Aboli- tion of Man was “an all but indispensable intro- duction to the entire corpus of Lewisiana.” Lewis

himself revealed that it was “almost my favorite among my books.” Indeed, he referred to it again and again in virtually all of his later works—he says That Hideous Strength is “a novelization of its essential thesis” and the first four chapters of

Mere Christianity “operate in effect, as a simpli- fied version or beginners’ guide to Abolition.”

But, the average Evangelical reader today would be justifiably baffled by this notion: the book, despite its many pithy epigrammatic quotes, seems

to be arcanely philosophical and morosely pessi- mistic.