Rating: 
Summary: As I Please on My Repining Chair
Review: First, the publisher should get high marks for producing such a good-looking book: its decipherable typeface and neat margins, made for a pleasant reading experience. Mr. Hitchens complements its production by his smoothly-written text. Hullo!: a man who makes you look up the word "repine" cannot be all bad. He cannot be all good either. When he writes: "It doesn't matter what one thinks, but how one thinks." the mind reels. (At least this mind.) This formulation cannot stand. When Noam Chomsky remarks to an interlocutor that he esteems Angela Davis higher than Alexandr I. Solzenhitsyn, it is of no interest to me how he arrived at such a silly opinion, only that he held it. This formulation also misses the very virtue of Orwell's writings (which Mr. Hitchens has extolled elsewhere): that intellectuals (like non-intellectuals) can at times be right (e.g., J.M. Keynes' claim that the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were too harsh) and some times be wrong (pardon any blows to amour-propre).Dissent is necessary in a free and democratic society [especially during a Republican administration which loves, among other things, the Fallacy of the Shifting Rationale]; a global distribution of Little Miss Marys,though, riding not "high horses" but particular hobbyhorses is as dispiriting as one filled with dogmatists.
Rating: 
Summary: Blah
Review: I bought this book as it was recommended by a panelist on the Tina Brown show. I believe little information should be taken at face value unless it is well documented. Therefore, I have a horrible reputation as a contrarian who requires people to think and document when presenting me with an opinion. Obviously, in our current political environment where people are so mentally distressed that they can't bother to understand the other side of an issue, it's an interesting period.
I had hoped to read this book to better understand my contrarian leanings or at a minimum to learn something of significance. Unfortunately, I did not. I did not find the book enjoyable at all. I found the author to be quite bombastic and quite the name dropper. Frequent anecdotes of past history are somewhat meaningful to frame how an unpopular thought process eventually changed political thinking but there are no current event anecdotes of significance.
I care to form no opinion positive or negative about Hitchens. Unfortunately, his writing just did not move me and maybe that's my fault.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book to be read in a single sitting
Review: I have to say that I find Hitchens to be one of the best writers alive today. His ability to craft a sentence is amazing. His ability to be witty is even more so. This book is a good summation of his philosophy as well as his style of writing and arguing. Its also a good book to read in a single sitting drinking a cup of coffee in a cafe. Its true that much of what Hitchens asserts is 'obvious' in one sense. After all, you should stand up for liberty, don't follow your friends along what you know is the wrong track just because it may be better for the cause 'in the long run'. But just because these things are clear and no one will argue with them directly does not mean it is not powerful to hear them said in a straightforward manner. It is also useful to see how even though these things seem to simple, very intelligent people feel that they must forget them. An excellent example Hitchen cites is defending Salmon Rushdie from his Iranian death sentence. He asks anyone who asserts that Rushdie was not properly sensitive to Islam in his _Satanic Versus_ if they support murder for hire? It is sadly unamazing to be told that many people feel they have to qualify their answer to that question. All in all, I'm better off for reading this book and I think you will be as well. Give it a shot.
Rating:
Summary: A young person's guide to terminal smugness
Review: If for nothing else, let me congratulate Smugmeister Hitchens for his repeated insistence that religion is itself primarily motivated by smugness & arrogance. This is a profound truth that needs to be widely disseminated. It's just too bad that Hitchens threw the deity out with the bathwater and remains unimpressed by The Argument From The Design Of Putting Greens.
Hitchens said: "I was sitting in a bible-study class at the age of about ten ("divinity", as we called it, being as mandatory as daily church attendance, and one of my favorite subjects then as now) when the teacher began to hymn the work of God in nature. How wonderful it was, she said, that trees and vegetation were green; the most restful color to our eyes. Imagine if instead the woods and grasses were purple, or orange."
Hitchens pooh-poohs this anthropocentric notion, but I consider it a perfectly respectable plausibility.
Rating:
Summary: Guidebook for thinking
Review: In an earlier day [mine] it was Paul Goodman's "Growing Up Absurd." Today, it's Hitchens' "Letters." Hitchens demonstrates he's a worthy successor to Goodman's role as a mentor to young people. Goodman wrote at the height of protests over civil rights, race and gender equality and war in Viet Nam. Hitchens assaults various icons of this generation with skillful prose and deep insight. "Unthinking acceptance" is his chief target. He is always worth reading, even if you are in opposition with his conclusions. This series of "letters" to young people is Hitchens at his best. He seeks to respond to the query asking "how a radical or 'contrarian' life may be lived." His persistent theme is to question whatever "accepted wisdom" is encountered. He opens with some definitions and explanations for his use of the unusual term "contrarian." Earlier terms, such as "dissenter," "iconoclast" and "freethinker" are generally applied to religious heretics. "Intellectual," coined during the Dreyfus Affair in France, retains a record of scornful judgment and is too limited. Hitchens prefers "contrarian" as helping the independent mind keeping focussed on "how it thinks" instead of "what it thinks." He reminds the young reader that maintaining independent thought is a lonely and essentially thankless task. In fact, he reminds us that if somebody expresses admiration for your insights, you're probably doing something wrong! In this collection there are no polemics, no identified targets, no vituperation against individuals or institutions. The theme is encouragement of individual thinking and reflection. No particular issues are raised and examined. Instead, patterns of thinking and the actions taken are considered. The reader is enjoined to reflect on which paths to consider and follow, since Hitchens is sympathetic with those confronted by the multiplicity of issues facing them. He further stresses that none of the subjects confronting young people today are likely to be resolved in absolute terms. He is conscious of his own inability to deal in absolutes - 'quietly proud of what little I'd done, as well as ashamed by how little that was." A realistic statement, it's one adding value to the advice on individuality permeating this book. Reading this collection is, of course, but a starting point. While he abjures demands for a "reading list," the essays are sprinkled with sources for examples of unconstrained thinking. Beginning with Emile Zola, he encourages readers to investigate George Dangerfield, Rilke, E.P. Thompson and Joseph Heller. That's a hefty assignment, but, as Hitchens stresses, achieving justice isn't an easy nor popular path. Hitchens disavows aspirations of becoming either a "leader" or a "role model" for young contrarians. Even so, his autobiographical comments provide clues to what must be done to fulfill the role. And every individual, he stresses, has an individual role - not everyone is expected to reach his level nor anyone else's. The only injunction is to continually self-examine what your beliefs are and how you express them. Only then can you be certain you qualify as a contrarian in pursuit of justic. The theme of this book was anticipated by F. M. Cornford at the beginning of the last century: "There is only one argument for doing something; the rest are arguments for doing nothing." Derive and argument for doing something . . . It was a valid statement a century ago, and remains important today.
Rating:
Summary: Resting on one's laurels
Review: In his much better book Prepared for the Worst, Christopher Hitchens reviewed Norman Podhoretz's gruesome memoir Breaking Ranks, and noted among that book's many vices the way that it presented itself as an affected series of letters to Podhoretz's son. Now years later Hitchens himself has written a series of letters to an imaginary radical who wants good advice on how to be an intelligent principled radical. Well, anyone who really does want to be a principled radical could find worse guides than this one. In case anyone doesn't already know it, Hitchens reminds us that the essence of politics is vigorous controversy and not smothering consensus. One should also question the obvious, one should never be blackmailed by loyalty to one's own side into supporting the vicious, and one should be particularly contemptuous of religion. One should not be bullied by public opinion, one should always have libertarian prejudices, and one should be aware of the trap of identity politics. There are many admirable radicals who have an excellent sense of humor, and there are other admirable radicals who take their views with the proper seriousness. In the end Hitchens praises a radicalism, if not a socialism, that seeks a globalization of liberty, and a maximum of skepticism, indignation and self-criticism. Well, good advice, at least most of it. But there is something lazy about the whole enterprise. Not only is the format artificial (couldn't Basic Books sprung for a real young contrarian?) but the style is as well. I might add that the absence of a real conversation only emphasizes the similarity to the Screwtape letters. There is one really fine passage in which Hitchens remembers about all the former political prisoners he met who have now been liberated. But then he reminds us that the Indian Socialist Fernandes, once Indira Gandhi's prisoner, is now the defense minister of a nuclear Hindu fundamentalist government, that President Havel is less than honest about the Czech republic's Gypsies, and President Mbeki is less than sane about AIDS. Unfortunately the rest of this book is less self-critical, it has the odour of a smuggly swallowed sherry. It badly needs a spectre at its banquet. For a start, who does Hitchens think he is arguing against when he invokes Aeropygytica or On Liberty? (Hillary Clinton perhaps?) Twelve years ago Conor Cruise O'Brien noted a tendency of Hitchens to refer to other people in excessively chummy terms. And in this book this tendency is becoming a bit of a nuisance, as about twenty people are offhandedly referred to as Hitchens' friend. At one point Hitchens speaks of enthusiasm of Havel and Solzhensityn's idea that we act "as if" we already lived in a just society. Looking now at the grim state of Russia in 2001, I think its politics needs something more than the inspiring examples of these saints for six o'clock. And in rightly praising Michnik and Konrad, should not some mention be made of the fact that both Poland and Hungary have freely returned the ex-Communists to power? And while one would ordinarily be sympathetic to his bold support of controversy and partisanship in contrast to consensus and moderation, I distinctly recall such an angry column during the Clinton impeachment trial (Feb 15, 1999, The Nation). Maybe it's just me, but during a trial one expects, no demands, impartiality and neutrality from the jurors of a trial. Since Hitchens' next major project is to be a new hagiography (sorry, biography) of Orwell, I might make some critical comments about his invocation as a model. People may invoke Mother Theresa or the Virgin Mary or St. Francis of Assissi as a model because, rightly or wrongly, they believe these three people possess virtues which they themselves do not have. But when the Murdochian press or the Likudian lumpenintelligentsia see in Orwell, not just a model of intellectual courage, but a vindication of their own crassness and hypocrisy, I think we have a problem. When everyone from Chomsky to Fussell, from Dwight MacDonald to Robert Conquest, from Bernard Crick to Martin Peretz views Orwell as a saint, only without any of those declasse Catholic connotations, and when only the late Raymond Williams stands condemned, is Orwell really the model for the contrarian of our time? Likewise, I have to dissent from Hitchens' treatment of religion. No doubt it is true that much religious discourse in the United States is vacuous or dishonest. But to sneer at Rilke, to condemn Pascal, and to drag in Tertullian's comments about the saved gloating over the damned strikes me as lazy. Even the gruesome cult of Ayn Rand gets more respect than the Roman Catholic Church (for opposing conscription). It is perfectly proper to praise Zola at the expense of the Church and the anti-Dreyfussards, but surely some mention should be made of French anticlericalism's tendencies towards paranoia, demagoguery and misogyny. And in response to a column of his written earlier this year in praise of iconoclasm, I can't help but respond that Richard Pipes has shown that the Leninist campaign against the church was an unmitigated human and moral disaster. The book contains many interesting anecdotes about Brecht, Bosnia, Milosz, Debs, and Paine, most of which have appeared in Prepared for the Worst, or For the Sake of Argument. Readers who admire Hitchens should turn to those books to see Hitchens at his best.
Rating:
Summary: The standard bearer for independent thinking
Review: It is hard to imagine many people giving unqualified support to Hitchens. He seems to relish the role of a contrarian. Lately, many on the Left have looked at him as a sellout. The Left icily received his condemnation of Clinton. His strong support of the intervention in Afghanistan after 9/11 labeled him as more hawk than dove. Yet, he is despised even more so by conservatives and especially by those in institutional power such as church leaders. His criticism of the Left is more than liberals wish, however his rebuke of the right is acrid. He has no love lost of tribe, religion, insular society, or politics that wrap themselves in the cloak of secrecy, security or jingoistic attitudes designed to promote sectarian action. Hitchens is his own man, a free thinker who uses his independence and intelligence to follow his instincts, his teachings and his sense of history. It is almost impossible to read his books, essays or articles without rallying around some aspect of his thoughts and simultaneously wringing your hands at something else that is seemingly absurd. Hitchens would not want it any other way. Those who wish dissension and division removed from the earth, he argues, have no idea that the alternative would be a boring, tedious world that many would wish to change even quicker.
In 'Letters' Hitchens adopts the role of mentor to the next generation of radicals and revolutionaries. Before chastising him as a promoter of reactionary, knee-jerk radicalism, it is important to understand that his definition of radical and revolutionary is steeped in the belief that a responsible citizen has the right and indeed the duty to challenge conventional thinking and wisdom. He cites the time-honored fable of the boy and the unclothed emperor to argue this approach. Without a critical populous to check the decisions and thinking of those in power, society runs dangerously close to tyranny and fascism.
Many people look upon critics such as Hitchens as people who can never do anything. They can only tear down, destroy. This view is baldly simplistic and shows an abject ignorance of the role of the critic. If something is working well, there is no need to expound upon its virtue. The role of the critic is to change. The critic's energy must be channeled towards improving that which he views as broken.
Hitchens gives models to follow in pursuit of a true independent, critical life. He writes of the unpopular positions taken by people such as Emile Zola in his defense of Albert Dreyfuss to underscore the benefits of the principled stand. He lambastes the tendency of the uninformed to settle their views based on feelings rather than ideas. He scours the church and other institutions for applying narrow thoughts to a broad following.
Throughout the book, Hitchens cites the words of a myriad of authors. Some have labeled this as Hitchen's own unhealthy elitism but I think he has a nobler goal in mind. He is stressing the argument that the educated mind is the only proper mind. It is only through reading that we can unshackle the limits imposed by governments, regimes and those who would wish to impose ideas that may have a following in the emotional district, but fail when challenged with a logical, historical and educated defense. Unfortunately, we all too often cling to ideas that haven't been vetted against rigorous review.
I like Hitchens words. I don't like Hitchens words. This may be the finest commendation I can give him. He challenges me to break from political orthodoxy and view my world through a more independent lens. This is quite a challenge. Not everyone wishes to expend the energy necessary to walk this less traveled trail. However, I adhere to Frost's less-traveled road. It's a bit frightening. It's also honorable. And correct.
Rating: 
Summary: Orwell's Feisty Little Brother
Review: Most writers who claim the title "curmudgeon" are merely posers (one thinks of Andy Rooney, who is really as toothless and establishment as can be.) Christopher Hitchens is the real deal. He says what he thinks, "and let the heavens fall." Hitchens proclaims himself a man of the left. But the more you read him, the more you get that he has real faith in humanity--that as stupid and evil as we can be, we also have the capacity to rise to the occasion and do good. We can do this because we have the ability to reason things out (I would say the "God-given ability"--Hitchens would sneer.) We can even discover truth (something the post-modern left denies.) Hitchens' prose style is like George Orwell crossed with the hardest-hitting linebacker you ever saw. And he is unafraid to cross party lines when necessary. In "Letters" he continues to savage Bill Clinton, and he acknowledges it was two "right-wingers"--Alan Greenspan and Milton Friedman--who helped end the draft during the Vietnam war. If you don't want to join "the herd of independent minds" that passes for thought in the media, this book is for you.
Rating: 
Summary: Dishonor of Thinking
Review: Mr. Hitchens' unequivocal shift from the radical left to the radical right, and his new career as Bush-Rumsfeld propagandist have moved me to delete my very positive review of what has proved to be a self-congratulating writing exercise.
Rating:
Summary: write because you have to
Review: one quote stuck with me 'write because you have to, not because you want to' i applied to myself with the need to read. this is the second book of his that i read and i have the lot of them on my bookshelf ready to be read as well. challenges me to think which is good
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