George Orwell’s “Some Thoughts on the Common Toad,” first published in 1946, is often read as a gentle seasonal sketch. But reading it that way alone misses its edge. Penguin’s Great Ideas paperback edition, “Some Thoughts on the Common Toad,” was published in 2010. The 128-page collection brings together eight of Orwell’s essays on literature, politics and everyday life. Orwell uses nature writing to make a political argument: that ordinary pleasures are worth protecting, and that a society whi
