A Hitch in Time: Writings from the London Review of Books

by Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens was a star writer wherever he wrote, and the same was true of the London Review of Books, to which he contributed sixty pieces over two decades. Anthologised here for the first time, this selection of his finest LRB reviews, diaries and essays (along with a smattering of ferocious letters) finds Hitchens at his very best.Familiar bêtes noires - Kennedy, Nixon, Kissinger, Clinton - rub shoulders with lesser-known P.G. Wodehouse, Princess Margaret and, magisterially, Isaiah Berlin. Here is Hitchens on the (first) Gulf War and the 'Salman Rushdie Acid Test', on being spanked by Mrs Thatcher in the House of Lords and taking his son to the Oscars, on America's homegrown Nazis and 'Acts of Violence in Grosvenor Square' in 1968.Edited by the London Review of Books, with an introduction by James Wolcott, this collection recaptures, ten years after his death, 'a Hitch in time': barnstorming, cauterising, and ultimately uncontainable

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Politics, History, Literary Criticism, Criticism, Philosophy

340 pages, Paperback

First published November 21, 2021

About the author

Christopher Hitchens was a British-American author, journalist, and literary critic known for his sharp wit, polemical writing, and outspoken views on religion, politics, and culture. He was a prolific essayist and columnist, contributing to publications such as The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, and The Nation.

A staunch critic of totalitarianism and organized religion, Hitchens became one of the most prominent public intellectuals of his time. His book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007) became a bestseller and solidified his place as a leading figure in the New Atheism movement. He was equally fearless in political criticism, taking on figures across the ideological spectrum, from Henry Kissinger (The Trial of Henry Kissinger, 2001) to Bill and Hillary Clinton (No One Left to Lie To, 1999).

Originally a socialist and supporter of left-wing causes, Hitchens later distanced himself from the left, particularly after the September 11 attacks, when he became a vocal advocate for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. His ideological shift, combined with his formidable debating skills, made him a controversial yet highly respected figure.

Hitchens was also known for his literary criticism, writing extensively on figures such as George Orwell, Thomas Jefferson, and Karl Marx. His memoir, Hitch-22 (2010), reflected on his personal and intellectual journey.

In 2010, he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer but continued to write and speak publicly until his death in 2011. His fearless engagement with ideas, incisive arguments, and commitment to reason remain influential long after his passing.

Reviews

[Theo Logos · Rating 4 out of 5]

I miss Christopher Hitchens. He was a singular talent — his erudition, wit, and arch style made him a joy to read. And no one, simply no one could deliver a polemic as brilliantly as Hitch.

So when I discovered this 2021 collection of previously uncollected essays, I was thrilled. All were taken from The London Review of Books, but the books Hitchens was reviewing allowed him to romp in some of his favorite playgrounds. He here once more pours his well deserved scorn on the Clintons, and gets to take more side shots at Henry Kissinger in a couple different pieces. The British Monarchy takes more hits from Hitch through the lens of the black sheep Princess Margaret. Kennedy and the whole ridiculous Camelot myth take a beating as hard as the one he served up to Clinton. He takes on several famous writers; Tom Wolfe (destroys him) P.G. Wodehouse (loves him) Salman Rushdie (likens him to James Joyce) and Gore Vidal (arch analysis).

Hitchens was also able to take on several true villains. J. Edgar Hoover, Kim Philby, Pinochet, and the fascist loving Diana Mosley all are here skewered by Hitchens’ pen. (I only leave out Kissinger as a villain because here he was a side character rather than a focus.) And he writes about serious, momentous events — Operation Desert Storm and the Oklahoma Bombing.

Taken altogether, this is a meaty, satisfying collection. Only two pieces didn’t work for me. Moderation or Death: On Isaiah Berlin is by far the longest piece in the collection. Hitch gave the most verbiage to a person I find to be his least compelling subject, something I just didn’t get. I was also cold on Say What You Will About Harold: On Harold Wilson, but I feel if I’d been better informed on British politics some fifty plus years ago that I would have better enjoyed that one.

[T.R. Preston · Rating 5 out of 5]

I miss Hitchens every day. The world is becoming more and more insane and I feel his voice could've been quite useful to slow down the chaos. I did not agree with him on everything, but I certainly respected him.

[Vivian · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting collection of essays, the one about Isaiah Berlin is particularly relevant, right now. But strong set of insights into past events and peoples. Hitchens is a strong voice and reasoned, whether or not you agree with his ideological bent. Like I said, a wonderful trip in the wayback time machine.

[Mike Futcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the topics will be familiar terrain to those who've read their fair share of Hitchens, A Hitch in Time nevertheless succeeds in pulling previously uncollected essays into a new and enjoyable volume. Despite the subtitle, which informs us that all the essays were previously published in the London Review of Books, A Hitch in Time is not merely a commentary on literature in the way that, for example, Unacknowledged Legislation was. Hitchens uses the opportunity of reviewing then-contemporary book releases to expand upon various topics, including the Oklahoma City bombing, J. Edgar Hoover and the Oscar award circus. (Regarding the latter, it's peculiar to see him write, however briefly, about Groundhog Day and Forrest Gump. They come from a different universe to Hitchens.) We get an indictment of JFK's administration and an account of Hitchens being spanked by then-Opposition leader Margaret Thatcher ("nothing that happened to the country in the next dozen years surprised me in the least" (pg. 83)). Of the twenty essays included, only five are overtly concerned with prominent authors.

There is, as I intimated earlier, a sense of over-familiarity with the topics: other essays discuss favourite Hitchens scratching-posts like the monarchy, Bill Clinton and Salman Rushdie. But they're all fluent and entertaining pieces (well, mostly: the Isaiah Berlin piece – by far the longest – was a chore). The book never feels like a shallow corral of essays which didn't make the cut in previous collections – which should be reassuring to prospective readers worried about their possible gullibility – and it has a sense of unity and continuity. Eighteen of the essays span the Nineties, bookended by one from 1983 and one from 2002, and if Hitchens in these pages is not yet the popular, battle-ready public intellectual he became in the post-9/11 decade, he is nevertheless a compelling presence. While I can't help but feel Hitchens would dislike the trite pun in the title, A Hitch in Time possesses enough quality writing to overcome any cynicism I had about its publication.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A library copy appeared, thanks to my wife (who's a Dwight Garner fan). So I spent the evening reading, browsing, and skimming. This was my first concentrated exposure to Hitchens' writing, and I wasn't very impressed. But there were certainly moments. Such as his skewering of Bill Clinton, and his long-ago spanking by Lady Thatcher. Leading to a long discussion of schoolboy caning and humiliation in Britain. . .

I didn't much care for his histrionic style. I read or skimmed about half the book. I see another reviewer noting that he loves Hitchens, but these are the dregs. Ostensibly these were book reviews, and he didn't like most of the books. I wouldn't have, either.

So. Your mileage may vary. Maybe I'll come back sometime and read his memoir. Or not. What I read/skimmed was maybe 2.5 star material, rounded up.

Dwight Garner's pungent review, which you should read too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/01/bo...
Excerpt:
"Hitchens had that quality, rarer than it should be, of knowing what to notice. In a review of Gore Vidal’s memoir, “Palimpsest,” he reminds us that Vidal wrote: “I should note that the only advantage for a child in having an alcoholic parent is that you acquire, prematurely, quite a bit of valuable data.” Spying Henry Kissinger in the Sistine Chapel gawping at the Hell section of “The Last Judgment,” Vidal commented: “Look, he’s apartment hunting.” "

[Dec · Rating 5 out of 5]

Besides the (longest) essay on Isaiah Berlin, which dragged, this is a really good collection. It hasn’t just been released to cynically make money as it doesn’t cover all the territory in all of his other books. His essays on Kennedy and Clinton remain illuminating, as do his withering replies to correspondences.

[Patrick McCoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems that a posthumous collection of Christopher Hitchens’ essays for the London Review of Books, A Hitch in Time, has been released. It covers the years between 1983-2002 and none of the essays have been anthologized elsewhere. He mainly takes on political, literary, academic, and social topics in this collection of essays. I think Hitchens has always been at his best with these topical types of essays. Thankfully this covers the period before he migrated to the right wing and became an Iraq war hawk. It includes a Foreword from former colleague James Wolcott. The first book review is an entertaining evisceration of Tom Wolfe: “The Wrong Stuff: On Tom Wolfe” (1983). Next up is “Diary: Operation Desert Storm” (1991), in which he criticizes the military operation, which is ironic because by 2002 he has drifted over their side. “Oh, Lionel! On P.G. Woodenhouse” (1992) is an appreciation of the author and I still have yet to read a single book of his, maybe this year? This followed by another entertaining take down in “Mary, Mary: On J. Edgar Hoover” (1993). It is also clear that Hitchens is no fan of Harold Wilson in “Say What You Will About Harold: On Harold Wilson” (1993). In “Diary: The Salman Rushdie Acid Test” (1994) he discusses the fatawa on its fifth anniversary and takes score on who is, and, isn’t supporting Rushdie. Next in “Diary: Spanking (1994) Hitchens inexplicably has a discussion about this act in terms of corporal punishment and in context of British politics, I think. “Who Runs Britain? Police Espionage (1995) is also obscure for the American since he refers to a book on Maxwell and the Scargill Affair, which I am ignorant of, but he seems not to have much respect for the government shenanigans concerning the incident. Spies and espionage are the subject of the next offering, “Lucky Kim: On Kim Philby” (1995). A take down of Hollywood is next on the agenda in “Diary: At the Oscars” (1995). “Look Over Your Shoulder: The Oklahoma Bombing” (1995) is a look at right wing ideology in the in 90s-it only gets worse with Trump. This followed by “Letters” where Hitchens corrects a false claim forma reader regarding Pat Robertson’s anti-semantic references in his The New World Order. Hitchens reviews Gore Vidal’s Palimpsest: A Memoir in “After-Time: On Gore Vidal” (1995). Next Hitchens evaluates Bill Clinton during his re-election campaign in “A Hard Dog to Keep on the Porch: On Bill Clinton (1996). I feel that having watched The Crown I was well-equipped to appreciate “The Trouble with HRH: On Princess Margaret” (1997). Hitchens takes a look back in “Brief Shining Moment: Kennedy and Nixon” (1998) and Kennedy doesn’t come off well in his estimation. This is followed by a letter from Arthur Schlesinger Jr. about the essay and Hitchens’ eviscerating response. “Acts of Violence in Grosvenor Square: On 1968, 1998” (1998) a look back at the tumultuous year of 1968 in 1998. “Diary: “Almanch de Gotha” (1998) on royalty…yawn. “Moderation or Death: On Isiah Berlin”(1999) about the intellectual Berlin after his death along with Letters about and from Hitchens. Hitchens dresses down socialite and fascist Diane Mosley in “What a Lot of Parties: On Diana Mosely” (1999). The final essay in the collection is “11 September 1973: Pinochet and Britain” (2002). It is a somewhat uneven collection, but it has its moments and was largely an enjoyable read for this Hitchens fan.

[Kylie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, but you wouldn't expect anything less of Hitchens.

[Vinny Bogan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love me some Hitch, but these are the dregs 🙁

[Chase Morgese · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hitchens's inimitable prose deserves the five brightest stars in existence. Could it be any other way?

But there's one caveat...

Hitch was an intellectual omnivore of the highest order, writing on a dizzying number of topics. No one (no mortal, at least) can expect to have enough background knowledge to approach this anthology head-on. If you decide to read it, be sure to have immediate access to the internet.

There's a Hitch-shaped hole in the hearts of all who have read his work.

[Bookreporter.com Biography & Memoir · Rating 3 out of 5]

The world of political commentary lost one of its most prolific and stimulating members when Christopher Hitchens died in 2011 at the age of 62. Now, thanks to A HITCH IN TIME, readers who enjoyed his often acidic but always eloquent writing can revisit its pleasures.

The 23 entries in this volume (first published in the United Kingdom in 2021) are invariably smart, unabashedly opinionated and frequently witty. As his former Vanity Fair colleague James Wolcott describes him in the book’s foreword, Hitchens was “the last of the living-large two-fisted provocateurs, ready to conquer ideological foes and hecklers alike as a lick of hair flopped over his forehead like Elvis Presley.” Despite all the ways they embody Hitchens’ quintessential qualities, the appeal of a substantial number of the pieces may be diminished for those who aren’t already interested in their subject matter or don’t at least possess some of the knowledge he presumes in his readers.

The majority of these pieces, most of which are book reviews, are selected from Hitchens’ contributions to the London Review of Books between 1983 and 2002, with all but two from the 1990s. Added to this are a smattering of entries labeled “Diary” and a few published letters. Among those that focus exclusively on British political leaders and issues decades in the rear-view mirror are a takedown of two-time Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson (“a consummate liar and phony”), the role of British espionage in trying to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers (an example of how “deniability has replaced accountability as a principle of our unwritten constitution”), and an unsurprisingly negative assessment of Diana Mosley, wife of the British fascist Sir Oswald Mosley, whose life demonstrated how “vulgar bigotry can be veneered with sophistication.”

But American readers are likely to become more attentive when it comes to a piece like “Brief Shining Moments: Kennedy and Nixon.” It’s a sharp-elbowed critique of the 35th president, a man whom Hitchens --- who moved to the United States in the 1980s, eventually acquiring citizenship in 2007 --- condemns for his “frantically sordid private life” and his “sorry term in office.” In Hitchens’ eyes, Kennedy and his 1960 opponent will be forever linked by the way that “whenever Nixon sought to justify an illegality or an atrocity, he did so by envious and bitter reference to the charming Kennedy ability to commit such crimes and get away with them.”

And as he shows in “A Hard Dog to Keep on the Porch: On Bill Clinton, 1996,” Hitchens holds a president who tried to forge himself in something like Kennedy’s image in similarly low regard. He was casually acquainted with Clinton during his time at Oxford in the late 1960s. He’s critical of what he sees as Clinton’s effort to move the Democratic Party to the center-right and how his “ambition became the same thing as his politics.”

One of the more entertaining and accessible pieces is Hitchens’ account of attending the 1995 Academy Awards ceremony with his 10-year-old son. That was the year Forrest Gump earned six Oscars (to his dismay). He takes the opportunity to deride Hollywood’s “attachment to formula itself; the sort of derivative, poll-driven, synthetic compromise…that is turning out turkey after turkey.” By that standard, things haven’t changed much in nearly 30 years.

In an essay on the weird popularity of spanking in British life, Hitchens recounts his argument with Margaret Thatcher at a book party in the House of Lords two years before she ascended to the office of Prime Minister. It ended with her whacking him on the behind with a rolled-up parliamentary document after he “stooped lower, with an odd sense of having lost all independent volition.” The incident becomes a metaphor for Thatcher’s term as PM: “‘Naughty boy,’ she sang out over her shoulder as she flounced away. Nothing that happened to the country in the next dozen years surprised me in the least.”

One of the delights of just about any Hitchens piece is his willingness to lob verbal grenades in the direction of his targets. Of the public intellectual Isaiah Berlin, he writes that he “sometimes felt or saw the need to be courageous, but usually --- oh dear --- at just the same moment that he remembered an urgent appointment elsewhere.” He describes the late Princess Margaret, the party-loving sister of Queen Elizabeth II, as “the forerunner of the public, vulgar Windsor style” and bemoans the fact that “so much Establishment time has been spent on the ‘containment’ of an averagely-volatile woman from a disadvantaged family.”

Given the volume and variety of work Hitchens produced, it’s unlikely that A HITCH IN TIME will be his final posthumous book. In particular, as James Wolcott points out in his foreword, it will be intriguing to fully assess Hitchens’ advocacy for the Iraq War, which alienated many of his longtime allies on the left. Regardless, he was a brilliant, if undeniably controversial, journalist who’s almost more fun to read when one disagrees with him as when his views align with one’s own.

Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just as I enjoyed reading William Buckley despite our sometimes marked political differences, I enjoyed reading these old essays of Hitchens from the London Review of Books. He is someone who wrote:

Concerning those who declined to criticize the fatwa against Salman Rushdie because of their purported multiculturalism: It is impossible to be sufficiently irritated by such people.

Of the Mormon church's International Genealogical Index: a classical piece of micro-megalomania where the monstrous scale of the effort dwarfs the essential pettiness of the enterprise.

Of antisemitism: A dead giveaway, in distinguishing the obsessive or morbid antisemite from the garden variety, is an inability to stay off the subject.

Concerning Sir Rhodes Boyson's comment that caning had done him no harm: Why do people invariably make this claim; usually before anyone has asked them?
==================
Problems with this collection included:
1. the sometimes eventual numbing pattern of Hitchen's writing that recalled Wolcott Gibbs' famous satire of Time magazine, Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind.

2. pieces about which I knew little – I know who Harold Wilson was, but it was difficult to follow arch comments about the members of his cabinet and their friends and acquaintances.

3. Hitch could, it is said, bang these essays out in a very short time. In some cases, the structure of the essay might have benefited from slightly longer contemplation.

[Duane Nickell · Rating 1 out of 5]

I like Christopher Hitchens, but this book was awful. It was a struggle to get through it. It's a collection of previously un-anthologized essays. Well, there's a reason these essays have not been published. A few were interesting; most weren't. And I skipped several. Hitchens uses big words and makes obscure references. Not for my taste.

[Simon Vacca · Rating 2 out of 5]

This felt like Christopher Hitchens' B-sides or demos.

[Thomas B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apparently I started this book in February, last year. I remember my intention was to read an essay or two between other books or at leisure, so as to parse out these echoes of a pre-9/11 Hitchens. Whatever happened, that didn’t. I read in a short burst and then the occasional hiccup, then months and months later I picked it up if only to get it off my goodreads “currently reading” section, swallowing up the last 150 pages as best I could.

I am sure there are a lot of folks that consider Hitchens a big influence, and I guess I’m one of them, in a way. Growing up in a rural, conservative, Christian space, Hitchens’ acerbic distaste for all things religious delighted me. I would watch clips of his debates and his appearances on C-SPAN, and model parts of my presentation style on him. Of course, this was an immature mistake. There is a fine line between being mean to someone engaging in demagoguery and manipulation at a mass level, and then simply being a high school twerp bullying the religious.

In years since, I’ll revisit some of these clips (graciously collected on Youtube as “hitchslaps”—could you call it a portmanteau? Certainly it carries its sexist baggage), and they’re often worth a laugh. Sometimes, though, I wonder what the point of it all is. Hitchens is very funny and intelligent and well-spoken. I wonder who his ‘hitchslaps’ are convincing. I wonder what it looks like to be merciless to ideologues and identitarians in positions of power, but to be sanguine towards people being corralled by them.

I must say, lately getting e-mails at work encouraging prayer and protection against “anti-Christian bias,” I wish Hitchens were around to do some bullying to those that deserve it.

These texts have Hitchens writing pre-9/11, before his stark turn to warmongering. Unlike my 13-year-old self, I now live in Washington D.C.—quite literally steps from Hitchens’ former home—and I wonder if I woke up one day and saw smoke rising from the Pentagon and turned on the news to see towers collapsing in on themselves, instead of seeing these things on the raised corner television of my classroom in rural Illinois, I’d have had a different trajectory. I doubt it, but who knows?

Anyway, the book is a good collection of Hitchens’ writing for the London Review of Books. Some of them are delightful, some are terribly long (the piece on Isaiah Berlin is something like 40-pages long, and I confess I got bored of it and skimmed the second half). There is the odd letter responding to Hitchens and sometimes responding to the responder. One, written by Francis Wheen, is a real treat: “would [Roger Scruton] care to apologize for this libel—and, in the future, to consign his malodorous ruminations to their proper place in his Whitshire cesspit?” (pg274, emphasis mine.)

What a treat of regionalism and vocabulary!

I’d probably only recommend this to folks who love Hitchens’ writing, and won’t be too bummed out by the dark period between the end of this book and his return to sanity. The return (if my memory is right) which, unfortunately, coincided with his terminal cancer diagnosis. That diagnosis facilitated Hitchens’ best pieces of writing, for Vanity Fair titled Mortality.

[Red Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found these essays by Hitchens more biting and maybe even vindictive in parts vs. some of his others works containing more mirth. Not sure if that is because this is a collection mostly from the 1980s and 1990s (all published in the London Review of Books), so Hitchens had more things to be critical of during that time, but either way still worth the read as he holds nothing back.

Writing on Rushdie in 1994, so some foretelling here - "Yasser Arafat, for example, has given an interview - to an Irish paper - which defends Rushdie in ringing tones. Clearly, this is not unrelated to his own confrontation with the grim Hamas forces and with their Iranian paymasters."

On publishing Rushdie - "After tedious and cynical delay had overtaken the publication of Dubliners, Joyce wrote to his publisher in 1906: 'I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilisation in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass.'"

on the Oklahoma bombing - "this kind of American populism has always been tainted by its kinship with racism and superstition, and by its servility to the very power it ostensibly rails against."

On the Cuban Missile Crisis: "This needless war of nerves was to assist Brezhnev and his allies in toppling Khrushchev. An uncounted cost of the Cuban adventure is that it cost the pre-Gorbachev reformists a generation, which Eastern Europeans had to live through - and which the luckless Cubans still do."

And of course Hitchens always educates us by sending us to the dictionary:
- exegetical: careful analysis of biblical passages
- meliorism: belief that the world tends to improve and that humans can aid its betterment

[Michael Reilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is lesser Hitchins.

It is a collection of Hitchens' articles in the London Review of Books. The introduction points out that none of these pieces have been previously collected. That is a positive for those of us who have read all of Hitchen's collections. On the other hand, Hitchens published six or seven big collections of essays and articles. You have to wonder whether much good stuff is left uncollected. The answer seems to be, no.

Many of these pieces feel rushed off; an Oscar diary that never really gets to the Oscars or a Gore Vidal piece that is a chance to tell old stories and settle scores. Some of them are hard core English politics or old English radical fights. A piece on former Prime Minister Harold Wilson goes deeply into the minutia of 1960s English political intrigue. It was beyond this American's ability to follow.

The best Hitchins essays have a structure and an argument, along with the wit, rapier and allusions. These seem to be quick drafts that haven't been polished.

Hitchins being Hitchens, he does get off some good lines, brutal insults and interesting ideas. In his review of an insignificant book about P. G. Wodehouse he drops in a fascinating discussion of the possible influence of Oscar Wilde on Wodehouse, despite the lack of evidence of such a link. He also notes, "Both died in exile, having been meanly treated by a culture that prides itself above all on having a broad and keen sense of humor". That is a stop-and-consider sentence.

This is for completist. I would suggest the "Arguably" collection to start.

[Freyr Þorvaldsson]

A Hitch in Time is a collection of 20 articles and 2 letters in the London Review of Books. It's a nice mix of essays, all published before 2002. It's lighter on lit chat than most of his other collections and concerns itself mainly with late 20th-century American and English politics.

If you're new to Hitchens and want him at his best then you should probably read Arguably or Hitch 22, his memoir. It covers a lot of the same ground and often with more context. If you've already finished those and want more, god help you, then this is as nice a collection as any to continue.

The subjects covered are:
- Tom Wolfe
- Operation Desert Storm
- P.G. Wodehouse
- J. Edgar Hoover
- Harold Wilson
- Salman Rushdie's fatwa
- His spanking by Margaret Thatcher
- UK police espionage
- Kim Philby
- The Oscars
- Oklahoma Bombing
- Review of Gore Vidal's memoir: Palimpsest
- Bill Clinton
- Princess Margaret
- Kennedy and Nixon
- Followed by an amusing angry letter by Arthur Schlesinger Jr
- Grosvenor Square protests
- Minor royalty: Almanach de Gotha
- Isaiah Berlin
- Diana Mosley
- Pinochet and Britain (More about Allende than anything)

[Stephen Coates · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book comprises 20 book reviews that Christopher Hitchens wrote for the said journal, mostly in the 1990s but a few earlier. All of the books profiled are non-fiction, most about significant political or academic figures. Each of the reviews is comprehensive, far beyond reviewing the book in question as written but drawing on his extensive knowledge of the subjects of the books and the events discussed within as well as episodes and angles not included that he opined should have been. One, of the late political academic, Isaiah Berlin was 45 pages long, raising the question of whether a review is intended to generate interest in reading a book or provide such a comprehensive summary the reader may conclude doing so to be unnecessary. However, if one did read one of the books reviewed, the review would provide a useful companion read.

[Cathy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I listened to this audio book as much as I I could but stopped a third way through it. I realized I couldn't follow it for several reasons. Firstly, the narrator is more Peter Hitchens than Christopher Hitchens. Peter is excitable and seems a bit caught up in himself. That's not to say Christopher isn't but he is more subdued in his delivery which to me makes him more palatable. Secondly, the information is not current and more importantly not written in a way that you are enticed to follow or go back in time to experience. Christopher Hitchens is thought provoking as a speaker. As a writer, he comes across as a drunk ranting about fantastical thoughts.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was impossible not to know Christopher Hitchens was a great noisemaker, I heard about him all the time, but I never read his stuff. Then he died, but now he's back.

These essays are intriguing, full of fireworks, and replete with erudition. Hitchens seemed to most enjoy taking down other writers and public figures--Bill Clinton, Isaiah Berlin, Arthur Schlesinger--but he made great arguments. He was a devilish balloon-popper. This can get tedious, but I found that if you read the essays now and then, not straight through, the journey is worth the toll.

[Mark Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of essays by the late great Christopher Hitchens is a bit hit and miss. This is largely due to many of the publication dates being decades ago and with any collection of this kind they were written to be consumed at the time in light of recent events or sways in public opinion, today, unless you have an particular interest in the person/subject many can feel irrelevant. There are plenty of gems, Hitchens style, wit and passion evident as always but I found myself waining at times.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some great takedowns of well-deserving targets like the Kennedys, Bill Clinton, Isaiah Berlin etc. This is all pre-9/11 and before Hitchens decided he's had it with the ceiling a left writer is faced with and chose the path of the former-leftie-intellectual-mugged-by-reality where the sky is the limit when it comes to fame and money and he spent most of his time on the frivolous (fighting creationists) and the vile (supporting U.S. wars of aggression).

[Craig Fiebig · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a manner uniquely his own, Hitchens critiques political ideologies, examines historical events, and reviews literary works, blending rigorous analysis with personal insight. His essays touch upon totalitarianism, human rights, and the complexities of power. As always, he challenges prevailing dogmatic narratives with his rapier intellect and wit. Always worth reading no matter your ism of choice; Hitchens is an equal opportunity slayer of tautologies.

[Shana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christopher Hitchens was inimitable... This is best on paper and with google handy to be reminded of some of the people referrer to constantly.
Always astute, often funny, and cynical, he sae through a lot of fluff.. I don't always agree but his irreverence is wonderful. I could almost forget if not forgive his abandoning Hong Kong...

[Stan Fleetwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

I admired Hitch's writing when he wrote on religion. However I found these essays pretentious, full of name dropping - and did he admire anyone he met? Most are described with (superfluous) put-down adjectives.

[Kent Winward · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little blast from the past in this collection of previously uncollected writings by Hitchens who is always entertaining, but the arguments and critiques felt more like a distant echo of a previous time, in light of the current world we live in without Hitchens' contrariness.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful. Of course.

[Kirsten]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/01/bo...

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5. This collection mostly feels unnecessary.