Dr. Samuel Johnson, an intellectual monster and attentive observer of reality, serves as a master of ceremonies, always accompanied by his friend James Boswell. The Swift, idealists and chaotic revolutionaries, spokesmen of the airs of change of the nascent new world, will face their own contradictions in the hand of Dr. Johnson, who will test his moral and intellectual capacities. In a text impregnated with subtle irony, Chesterton constructs a brilliant allegory of the nation that is born, with its impetus and its innocence. Games of power, intrigue and the most intimate emotions make this work a portrait of a society from the beginning of the last century, not so different from ours.