Wells organized the essays thematically, inserting a fanciful "synopsis" after the table of contents conveying his view that the book constituted an argument: "Blériot arrives and sets him thinking.

(8) He discourses on the Modern Novel, (9) and the Public Library; (10) criticises Chesterton, Belloc, (11) and Sir Thomas More, (12) and deals with the London Traffic Problem as a Socialist should.

(13) He doubts the existence of Sociology, (14) discusses Divorce, (15) Schoolmasters, (16) Motherhood, (17) Doctors, (18) and Specialisation; (19) questions if there is a People, (20) and diagnoses the Political Disease of Our Times.

(26)"[3] The journalistic production in An Englishman Looks at the World reflects Wells's turn from novel-writing to journalism, which began in the years before the outbreak of the Great War.

[5] Included in the collection are an account of "My First Flight,"[6] a long essay entitled "The Great State" that prefigured many of the themes of The Outline of History, and a philosophical essay entitled "The So-Called Science of Sociology," arguing that sociology would never be a science because "counting, classification, measurement, the whole fabric of mathematics, is subjective and deceitful, and .