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A good collection of Erasmus' works, though by no means comprehensive. It would have benefited from having an editor, as the works were in no particular order, and some were included more than one time. One was in untranslated Middle English with the letter "u" used in place of "v", but also for "u", and other such confusing syntax.
Erasmus was a brilliant man and in many ways ahead of his time, though obviously also a product of it. He was part of the broad reform movement sweeping through the monastic orders of the Christian Church in the days leading up to Martin Luther's break with the Church (Luther also being a member of the monastic reform movement). To hear Erasmus' version, he was the only one who valued and cherished enlightenment, learning, the advancement of human knowledge, religion, and so on. He was especially negative about the renaissance monastic orders, though even he had to admit there were individual examples of piety, self-sacrifice, and service to be found among them.
Erasmus was in many respects a porto-Liberal (not "liberal" in the sense used today as another word for Progressive, but the original meaning of Liberty). He was "proto" in that he was not focused on the type of government, but rather on individuals being free and having basic civil rights, regardless of the form of government under which they lived. He was a fan of peace, but being in thrall to the warlike structure of nobility and entitlement put that value on a collision course with lasting peace.
Like most luminaries of the renaissance, he was influenced by the version of Classical-era nobility as passed on by Socrates, Plato, and so many other aristocratically-minded (Erasmus detested Aristotle). Therefore he positively held everything to do with money or work in contempt. This of course poisoned much of the opportunity to advance further in the renaissance, as the noblemen commanding armies and achieving success through conquest, rape, and plunder were "noble" and to be admired, while carpenters, merchants, or bankers were money grubbers to be despised and pitied for having to work for a living. Deirdre McCloskeycan give you an earful about this, and in fact does in Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World.
He also shows what a product he was of his time in his virulent anti-Semitism. Some of his remarks about Pharisaical observances of this or that could be taken in the strain of outward ritual done for appearance sake versus more spiritual but more internal practices, much as is phrased in the New Testament. However, he uses such selective terms interchangeably with "Jewish" and freely uses "Jewish" and "Jew" in a pejorative manner; one is reminded of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.
Erasmus is a purist. He scorns and despises all that he does not understand or approve of, without making any effort to understand that maybe different people are different, and without the humility to accept that he cannot know the hearts of other people. While outward religious rituals and forms and memorized prayers may not mean much to him, they can be deeply meaningful for some people. Which is not to say there aren't people going through empty motions and then getting right back to a life filled with sin, surely his judgments were informed by real life examples. But he seemed to generalize from particular cases, and tended not to see serious fault in himself about anything. He did have a sardonic sense of humor and could crack self-effacing jokes, but these did not usually cut deep.
For me, the Praise of Folly was hands-down the best part of the collection and deserves to be read today. Against War (War is Sweet to Those Who Don't Know It) is another well worth reading. The rest is of mixed readability and value. There are several biographical sketches and essays by others about Erasmus (and some more than once!), mostly of good quality, but James Anthony Froude's read like hagiography and didn't seem to rise to the level of the others.
A good read overall but not fantastic. At least make sure you get around to reading Praise of Folly and Against War sometime in your reading life, and the others too if it sparks your interest.