Buy Atlantic Books Hitch 22: A Memoir by Hitchens, Christopher online on desertcart.ae at best prices. ✓ Fast and free shipping ✓ free returns ✓ cash on delivery available on eligible purchase. Review: Christopher Hitchens, once the "enfant terrible" of the international hard left, has written a memorable memoir, HITCH-22, that is at once pretentious, bombastic, self indulgent, sometimes petulant -- and often brilliant. Much in Hitchens' book is laugh out loud funny as he takes one pot shot after another at his old political allies and enemies. And for someone with Hitchens' wit and writing facility, taking down his enemies with the written word is like shooting the proverbial fish in a barrel. On a more serious note, Hitchens explains how he transformed himself from a London-based Trotskyite commentator into an American immigrant who defends of the allied invasion of Iraq. In fact, Hitchens presents us with a quite sensible defense of George W. Bush's war on terror in both Iraq and Afghanistan. This is not an easy book to read, mainly because Hitchens writes in a style that makes clever use of inverted grammer and five and six syllable words as he reaches into his psyche to explain himself. Morever, his views are strongly held, and he doesn't suffer fools with any sympathy for their alleged pigheadedness. On the other hand, this book is a very good read for those who are trying to cope in a world that seems to be spiraling out of control. Hitchens opens his memoir with a short family history - which may explain a lot about his cynical view of the world. His father was a quite common British Navy officer, while his mother was an immigrant Jew with Polish/Germanic blood. His mother ultimately meets s a tragic fate, while his father lives out his routine life without a clue to the torment of his wife or the intellectual pretensions of his son. Hitchens was educated at Oxford, where he is exposed to the leftist tendencies of that venerable institution, and he became a self-proclaimed Trotskyite member of the communist party. In his early days, the Vietnam War was the focus of his activism, and he joined the anti-war movement that denigrated capitalistic America. But his intellectual curiosity was too restless for the static Marxist view of the world, and as he witnesses events in eastern Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere, he begins to develop empathy for the free enterprise system that empowers America. The turning point for Hitchens came on Sept. 11, 2001. The terrorist attacks on lower Manhattan and the Pentagon, costing some 3,000 lives (most of them American) was a revelation for Hitchens. "Before the close of that day, I had deliberately violated the rule that one ought not to let the sun set on one's anger, and had sworn a sort of oath to remain coldly furious until these hateful forces had been brought to a most strict and merciless account." So Hitchens began to write about the hatefulness of the Islamist jihadists, defending America against those who felt "the chickens had come home to roost." `I did not intend to be told, I said, that the people of the United States - who included all those toiling in the Pentagon as well as all those, citizens and non-citizens, who had been immolated in Manhattan - had in any sense deserved this or brought it upon themselves," Hitchens writes. "I also tried to give a name to the mirthless, medieval, death-obsessed barbarism that had so brazenly unmasked itself. It was, I said, 'Fascism with an Islamic Face'." When he decides to become an American, he studies diligently for the citizenship test and passes, of course, with flying colors (Hitchens is a serious student of American history as evidenced by his book, "Thomas Jefferson: Author of America"). By that time he had become an ardent supporter of the incursion into Iraq and he was sworn in at the Jefferson Memorial by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff (talk about clout). His fondness for America, however, does not extend to American presidents and other national leaders: Lyndon Johnson ("hideous); Richard Nixon ("running a parallel regime of bagmen and wiretappers behind the façade of a legitimate government); Jimmy Carter ("..pious, born again creep); Ronald Reagan ("the carapace of geniality proved to be flaky...the look of senile, shifty malice); George H.W. Bush ("I simply detested the way in which he lied his way as Vice President through the Iran-contra scandal.."); Bill Clinton ("habitual and professional liar"); Curiously, George W. Bush escapes the Hitchen scorn. In an earlier volume ("The Trial of Henry Kissinger," published in 2001) Hitchens developed a full-scale criminal indictment of Henry Kissinger (whom Hitchens describes as"indescribably loathsome" in his memoir) for his conduct of American foreign policy. In the final chapters of his book, Hitchens shifts the focus to himself. He comes across as a gadfly, of course, but also a wary, skeptical (sometimes cynical) observer of our times whose professional objectives include intense scrutiny of all that is evil in our world. In an effort to explain himself further, Hitchens fashions for himself a Proustian survey in which his answers are supposed to give us insight into his persona. What we get is a portrait of a conflicted intellectual who takes pride in his knowledge and experiences, but whose most "marked characteristic" is insecurity. He most dislikes stupidity, according to his self-imposed questionnaire, and he most admires both moral and physical courage. His favorite virtue is an appreciation for irony. It was with a sense of irony then, when Hitchens was approaching 50 years of age, that his younger brother, Peter, discovers that their mother was Jewish, raising the intriguing possibility that they both are Jewish. A self-proclaimed atheist (see his book, "god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything"), Hitchens considers, but rejects the prospect of his Jewishness. In doing so, he reveals his contempt for Zionist Israel and its occupation of Palestinian lands. But his awareness of his Jewishness increases his sympathy for the suffering of the "children of Israel" as they seek a homeland. His confliction over his roots thus gives him valuable insights to the current Middle East stalemate between Israeli Zionists and Islam jihadists. Hitchens is clearly sympathetic to the Palestinian movement, but he also thinks that the Jewish people have a right to seek their own identity, preferably somewhere else than on Palestinian soil. Hitchens illuminates his agony over this dilemma by describing the deterioration of his relationship with his good friend Edward Said, a Palestinian intellectual. Hitchens and Said initially developed a very close relationship, but after Sept. 11, 2001, according to Hitchens, Said started writing anti-American essays and articles, and their relationship started to cool. The relationship was effectively destroyed when Said quoted, without attribution, commentary by Hitchens that he (Said) said was "racist." There could be no greater insult to Hitchens than to be called a racist. He never spoke to Said again. HITCH-22 is a very good memoir -- it is topical, penetrating, amusing and revealing -- one that is well worth the time and effort to read. The memoir offers an insightful look into the mindset of one of our era's most astute social and political critics. Postscript: shortly after his memoir was published in the spring of 2010, Hitchens was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus that had metastasized into his lung and lymph nodes. He underwent chemotherapy and wrote in the September issue of Vanity Fair: "I am quietly resolved to resist bodily as best I can..." Review: So, this is a great book, a masterpiece even, and this rating by no means reflects Hitchens' mastery of language, philosophy and wit. Rather, it's the typesetting that was used by the publisher. 'The text height is sub-millimeter!' (exclaimed the Man-Karen). I don't need text the size of The Green Caterpillar, but reading text this small severely detracted from the enjoyment of reading this otherwise brilliant book. Such a pity.
T**S
Christopher Hitchens, once the "enfant terrible" of the international hard left, has written a memorable memoir, HITCH-22, that is at once pretentious, bombastic, self indulgent, sometimes petulant -- and often brilliant. Much in Hitchens' book is laugh out loud funny as he takes one pot shot after another at his old political allies and enemies. And for someone with Hitchens' wit and writing facility, taking down his enemies with the written word is like shooting the proverbial fish in a barrel. On a more serious note, Hitchens explains how he transformed himself from a London-based Trotskyite commentator into an American immigrant who defends of the allied invasion of Iraq. In fact, Hitchens presents us with a quite sensible defense of George W. Bush's war on terror in both Iraq and Afghanistan. This is not an easy book to read, mainly because Hitchens writes in a style that makes clever use of inverted grammer and five and six syllable words as he reaches into his psyche to explain himself. Morever, his views are strongly held, and he doesn't suffer fools with any sympathy for their alleged pigheadedness. On the other hand, this book is a very good read for those who are trying to cope in a world that seems to be spiraling out of control. Hitchens opens his memoir with a short family history - which may explain a lot about his cynical view of the world. His father was a quite common British Navy officer, while his mother was an immigrant Jew with Polish/Germanic blood. His mother ultimately meets s a tragic fate, while his father lives out his routine life without a clue to the torment of his wife or the intellectual pretensions of his son. Hitchens was educated at Oxford, where he is exposed to the leftist tendencies of that venerable institution, and he became a self-proclaimed Trotskyite member of the communist party. In his early days, the Vietnam War was the focus of his activism, and he joined the anti-war movement that denigrated capitalistic America. But his intellectual curiosity was too restless for the static Marxist view of the world, and as he witnesses events in eastern Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere, he begins to develop empathy for the free enterprise system that empowers America. The turning point for Hitchens came on Sept. 11, 2001. The terrorist attacks on lower Manhattan and the Pentagon, costing some 3,000 lives (most of them American) was a revelation for Hitchens. "Before the close of that day, I had deliberately violated the rule that one ought not to let the sun set on one's anger, and had sworn a sort of oath to remain coldly furious until these hateful forces had been brought to a most strict and merciless account." So Hitchens began to write about the hatefulness of the Islamist jihadists, defending America against those who felt "the chickens had come home to roost." `I did not intend to be told, I said, that the people of the United States - who included all those toiling in the Pentagon as well as all those, citizens and non-citizens, who had been immolated in Manhattan - had in any sense deserved this or brought it upon themselves," Hitchens writes. "I also tried to give a name to the mirthless, medieval, death-obsessed barbarism that had so brazenly unmasked itself. It was, I said, 'Fascism with an Islamic Face'." When he decides to become an American, he studies diligently for the citizenship test and passes, of course, with flying colors (Hitchens is a serious student of American history as evidenced by his book, "Thomas Jefferson: Author of America"). By that time he had become an ardent supporter of the incursion into Iraq and he was sworn in at the Jefferson Memorial by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff (talk about clout). His fondness for America, however, does not extend to American presidents and other national leaders: Lyndon Johnson ("hideous); Richard Nixon ("running a parallel regime of bagmen and wiretappers behind the façade of a legitimate government); Jimmy Carter ("..pious, born again creep); Ronald Reagan ("the carapace of geniality proved to be flaky...the look of senile, shifty malice); George H.W. Bush ("I simply detested the way in which he lied his way as Vice President through the Iran-contra scandal.."); Bill Clinton ("habitual and professional liar"); Curiously, George W. Bush escapes the Hitchen scorn. In an earlier volume ("The Trial of Henry Kissinger," published in 2001) Hitchens developed a full-scale criminal indictment of Henry Kissinger (whom Hitchens describes as"indescribably loathsome" in his memoir) for his conduct of American foreign policy. In the final chapters of his book, Hitchens shifts the focus to himself. He comes across as a gadfly, of course, but also a wary, skeptical (sometimes cynical) observer of our times whose professional objectives include intense scrutiny of all that is evil in our world. In an effort to explain himself further, Hitchens fashions for himself a Proustian survey in which his answers are supposed to give us insight into his persona. What we get is a portrait of a conflicted intellectual who takes pride in his knowledge and experiences, but whose most "marked characteristic" is insecurity. He most dislikes stupidity, according to his self-imposed questionnaire, and he most admires both moral and physical courage. His favorite virtue is an appreciation for irony. It was with a sense of irony then, when Hitchens was approaching 50 years of age, that his younger brother, Peter, discovers that their mother was Jewish, raising the intriguing possibility that they both are Jewish. A self-proclaimed atheist (see his book, "god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything"), Hitchens considers, but rejects the prospect of his Jewishness. In doing so, he reveals his contempt for Zionist Israel and its occupation of Palestinian lands. But his awareness of his Jewishness increases his sympathy for the suffering of the "children of Israel" as they seek a homeland. His confliction over his roots thus gives him valuable insights to the current Middle East stalemate between Israeli Zionists and Islam jihadists. Hitchens is clearly sympathetic to the Palestinian movement, but he also thinks that the Jewish people have a right to seek their own identity, preferably somewhere else than on Palestinian soil. Hitchens illuminates his agony over this dilemma by describing the deterioration of his relationship with his good friend Edward Said, a Palestinian intellectual. Hitchens and Said initially developed a very close relationship, but after Sept. 11, 2001, according to Hitchens, Said started writing anti-American essays and articles, and their relationship started to cool. The relationship was effectively destroyed when Said quoted, without attribution, commentary by Hitchens that he (Said) said was "racist." There could be no greater insult to Hitchens than to be called a racist. He never spoke to Said again. HITCH-22 is a very good memoir -- it is topical, penetrating, amusing and revealing -- one that is well worth the time and effort to read. The memoir offers an insightful look into the mindset of one of our era's most astute social and political critics. Postscript: shortly after his memoir was published in the spring of 2010, Hitchens was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus that had metastasized into his lung and lymph nodes. He underwent chemotherapy and wrote in the September issue of Vanity Fair: "I am quietly resolved to resist bodily as best I can..."
T**X
So, this is a great book, a masterpiece even, and this rating by no means reflects Hitchens' mastery of language, philosophy and wit. Rather, it's the typesetting that was used by the publisher. 'The text height is sub-millimeter!' (exclaimed the Man-Karen). I don't need text the size of The Green Caterpillar, but reading text this small severely detracted from the enjoyment of reading this otherwise brilliant book. Such a pity.
N**O
"HITCH-22: A Memoir" by Christopher Hitchens has many pages not fit for family consumption. He and his pals (they called him "Hitch," never but never the forbidden "Chris") used profanity as an element of bantering that would advance to a kind of bonding. Them against the world. Silly but obviously very intelligent and imaginative word games were frequent. Which of the group could one-up the other. The memoir's revelation of these private times will likely lead many readers to consider it grossly beyond the pale. Right from the start, Hitch pulls no punches. He decorates his epigraph with a stylized rose and the word "Caute" (Latin for "caution" or "beware"), both being a nod to Spinoza, one of Hitch's heroes. As Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu (q.v.) has pointed out, Spinoza wore a signet ring with the rose-and-word, with his initials, and signed his letters with the design. Beware, Spinoza warns, the rose also has thorns. Hitch joins in, declaring his memoir to be the same, and Hitch's first sentence starts, if not with a double barrel, at least with a paired warning shot above one's head. He second sentence follows with as lovely a sentiment as anyone might want. A rose and thorns. From his undergraduate days at Oxford, Hitchens was always front and center, confronting, speaking, lecturing, writing. His fearless debates were with anyone who dared, whether clerical, academic, or political, and foreign or local. In "Hitch-22" he has chapters on his parents and his well-known friends, like James Fenton, Martin Amis, and Salman Rushdie. Included more lately, himself counted among the Four Horsemen, were Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris, whose books on atheism are among my reviews. Hitchens fought totalitarianism in all its forms, including the religious as well as the national. Against that were science and reason, which he believed constitute "the great imperative of our time." Since science and reason are open-ended, waiting for discoveries and explanations to further our knowledge of everything, he realized that he and others of shared beliefs were always at the disadvantage against the metaphysical and eternal certitudes of opponents. Hitch had some thorns of his own, which likely contributed to his early demise. He smoked incessantly and drank continuously. On the international correspondent scene, he could smile, share a light with a stranger, and move right along into confidences about the protest or other action facing them. One might say that his profanities did not always appear necessary. And though he deeply and sincerely loved the English language, he could use it to turn something complex into something even more complex and obscure. And he liked to intone some smatterings of French, although always precisely "en pointe" (if I may twist a term). His memoir, however, is crystal clear. His drinking was life-long, habitual, and from what I can tell, essential -- for calm, for focus, for sharpness, for fluency. His final chapter is exquisite. Regardless the thorns, he is loved and missed.
M**S
It is possibly the fact that I am "getting on in years" but the printing is rather small, I will persevere.
T**H
In this book I found parts I did not care much for, like the excessive name dropping of literary figures, though it is to be expected from a lover of literature. Other parts I found fascinating. What do you say of a militant Communist after the downfall of Communism? While he tells you [I think] he was backing the wrong horse, it sounds insincere, and one feels that he may well believe that what was wrong with Communism was not the system but the implementation. He devotes much time to Iraq and justifying his support for Bush's war of choice. While he is critical of Bush, he is all for the regime change Bush's war effected, cost what may. I don't think you can separate both so neatly. Of course it's always good to see dictators bite the dust, but Hitch seems to think that this is the case at any price. And why Iraq? Here he muddles humanitarian principles with his job as journalist. As a journalist it's understandable that he focused on Iraq, since it was on the front page for many years, but from a human rights perspective, one can ask why such an all-out effort on Iraq? Why not North Korea, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Sudan, or China! In any of those countries he could collect just as large a collection of human right abuses as he did in Iraq. Hitch also overlooks the question of cost and benefit. Iraq has been a lousy investment for the U.S. in blood and treasure, and morally; and for what? Is Maliki's Iraq better than Saddam's. I guess so, quantitatively, but hardly so qualitatively. He tortures less, perhaps, but torture and corruption are still usual business, and likely to get worse. How many Iraqis did Bush's war kill, compared to the toll Saddam would have exacted in those years? After all, it's about human suffering, is it not? It's a step back to go forward, you say? It looks to me we gave a Ferrari to someone who doesn't know what the wheel and the brakes are for. Those are notions one needed not wait for hindsight to realize, for they were plain to see early in the war. There is a good chance that internecine strife will return to Iraq as the U.S. disengages completely, leaving Iran as the major influence -- so much for regime change. Yes, I do understand that Saddam's clan was like the Sopranos on steroids, but it is hard to believe that direct war was the best way to bring him down with all its attendant errors, miscalculations, collateral damage, fickleness and other associated hellish elements. How can an intelligent man support that method of regime change? Strangely, Hitch thinks he was one of the various agents in Washington, who caused the itch for regime change in Iraq. I wonder what evidence he has of this bottom-up claim to fame. It is not in the book. I am not privy to Hitch's sources but to anyone with open eyes, the decision to invade Iraq seems to have originated at the top and, contrary to what Hitch reports, not caused by a high-minded desire to eliminate a nasty dictator, but for other reasons; namely, the elimination of one of Israel's enemies, and to carry out Bush's vendetta against Saddam, who tried to kill his dad. Hitch also suggest that it was foolish to expect the UN inspectors to do any good, implying that some of them might have been bribed to submit a favorable inspection report. That claim would have some future if we had found the WMD the inspectors had "missed," supposedly, but we did not even with far more time looking for them. For a man as complex as Hitch it is slightly disappointing to see him make such a simplistic case for Bush's war. How must we act on our principles? Absolutely or with a sense or reality and pragmatism? Yes, we don't want despots, but the options for a quick change are seldom good. The gravest-extreme option of making war on a whole country to winkle out a small clan does not seem to be a good way to punish the bad and spare the good. After all, just three well-placed projectiles could have taken care of Saddam and his sons, with a little patience. And clearly, a more sane way would have been to wait for the Iraqi opposition to produce a charismatic and effective leader and then aid their efforts to fruition. Ramming democracy down the throat of people who are not ready, mature, and thirsting for it in the majority is not a good idea as we've seen. Hitch is quite paranoid about Iran, and I use the word aptly as "unjustified fear." Same as he thinks Saddam was not rational, he sees Iran as a big threat. I couldn't disagree more. Iran may well become the new international gadfly, but it will never be the big bear. It will continue to detain lost hikers and bother small ships with its fast boats, and yes keep denying the Holocaust and other stupid rhetoric, but that's it. Mark my words. If Iran gets a nuclear weapon it will use it as leverage and to exact respect, but it will never use it unless it is attacked first, because the people at the top, theocratic and all, are not crazy, love life, and know perfectly well that using a nuclear weapon is the last thing they would do. Just like Christians aren't rushing to meet their Lord, Muslims aren't in a hurry to meet Allah either, especially Muslim leaders, much as they are able to persuade impressionable others to martyrdom. What stopped Osama bin Laden from taking a place in the execution of the 9/11 attacks and die for his greatest cause? The mindset of those who seek political power is not compatible with self-immolation for a cause or a god. The US large nuclear arsenal, or Israel's smaller one for that matter, *IS* a most powerful deterrent, and if the former deterred the powerful Soviet Union, both combined will more than deter Iran, Pakistan, or any other nuclear Johnny-come-lately. With Saddam, Hitch commits the sin of inapt qualification. He says Saddam was not rational -- almost crazy -- and anything went, and so he was a danger to himself and others. Far from it for that reason; Saddam was no Hitler. He would not commit suicide when found hiding ignominiously in a hole in the ground with a loaded pistol, even knowing well his future would be rather short and unpleasant if caught. He clung to life like a barnacle to a hull. He obviously thought self-preservation paramount, and if he went down it was because of his erroneous calculus and misreading of former allies, not because he acted irrationally. A danger to opponents in Iraq, and minute countries like Kuwait, yes, to more powerful countries, no. Evil yes, irrational, no. Sorry Hitch. Hard to stomach is his apology for the Zionist neocon Paul Wolfowitz. All he has to show for it is the is that, unlike the rest of the country which took the Wolf's Kool-Aid from his public speeches and writings, Hitch had his dose administered privately straight from the horse's mouth. This book is not an easy read. It's choppy like the way Hitch speaks; his delivery is never smooth, and gives birth to ideas with much pushing and straining, though near always with very good results. He writes for the literati not hoi polloi, so if you don't have a large vocabulary keep a dictionary nearby because he likes to use unusual words when usual equivalents exist that would do just as well -- nothing wrong with showing off an excellent education. Fortunately, Hitch has much to make up for his somewhat annoying, eclectic politics. His views on religion, especially Islam, I find spot on and I much admire him for the well-thought out arguments of his religious debates, articles, and books in his formidable "take that!" style. As a human, his attitude towards tyranny, and other common varieties of human nastiness, is most refreshing for its fundamental clarity and sincerity. I wish him the best luck in his current struggle. May science help us keep alive for a long time one of the best among us.
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