The PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for Art of the Essay

2012 Winner: Arguably

"Arguably is a book of essays astonishingly wide-ranging and provocative, taking on everything from Middle Eastern politics to Thomas Jefferson and Prince Charles, from Lolita and Ezra Pound to Hitler, Saul Bellow and Hugo Boss."

Read more http://www.pen.org/page.php/prmID/2240

The Orwell Prize longlist

The Telegraph
The late Christopher Hitchens is one of 18 authors selected for the Orwell Prize for political writing.

A book by the late Christopher Hitchens is leading the field for this year’s Orwell Prize for best political book. Arguably, a collection of essays whose subjects range from the War on Terror to Diana, Princess of Wales, was praised by Nicholas Shakespeare in the Telegraph as displaying the author's characteristic “wit, intelligence and passion”.

This year's shortlists are announced next month and the winners on May 23.

Read more (telegraph.co.uk

'Arguably' on PW's Best Books of 2011 list.

Publishers Weekly
"We’ve just released our Best Books of 2011, the 100 adult and 40 children’s titles of 2011 we think everyone should read. Now we want to know what you think.

Vote on which of our top 10 picks is your favorite in the poll below, or write in your favorite 2011 book. We’ll announce the winning book in an upcoming issue of PW." Vote here.

A Voice, Still Vibrant, Reflects on Mortality

Hitchens, journalist Matthew Chapman, Dawkins, Carol Blue

By Charles McGrath / The New York Times

HOUSTON — Christopher Hitchens, probably the country’s most famous unbeliever, received the Freethinker of the Year Award at the annual convention of the Atheist Alliance of America here on Saturday. Mr. Hitchens was flattered by the honor, he said a few days beforehand, but also a little abashed.

Read More
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/books/christopher-hitchens-on-writing-mortality-and-cancer.html?ref=books

Book of the Week - Arguably

BBC Radio 4
A selection of the polemical journalist's essays. Read by Roger Allam.

First up 'Believe Me - It's Torture.' Hitchens confronts the issue of whether waterboarding is torture, by being waterboarded himself.


Starting Monday October 10, 2011.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015sz17

Hitchens in Houston, October 8, 2011

Atheist Alliance of America

"Christopher Hitchens has confirmed his intent go attend the AAA Convention in Houston on October 8th, to receive the Richard Dawkins Award for Freethinker of the Year. He will also be available to sign copies of his new book "Arguably", which will be for sale at the Convention."

http://atheistallianceamerica.org/

Knock-down brilliance

Arguably by Christopher Hitchens - The Independent
Review by Fred Inglis

Arguably? Arguably? Christopher Hitchens uses the phrase often enough of course, but strictly as Humpty Dumpty does, when Alice tells him she doesn't know what he means. Humpty Dumpty smiles contemptuously. "Of course you don't – till I tell you. I meant, 'there's a nice knockdown argument for you'." "Till I tell you": that's the point.

Read more
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/arguably-by-christopher-hitchens-2359192.html

Arguably by Christopher Hitchens: review

The Telegraph | Christopher Hitchens’s provocative journalism is greater than the sum of its parts, argues Nicholas Shakespeare as he reviews Arguably.

Every generation tends to look silly to the one after; those beehive hairdos, those chain smokers. Reacting to previous experience, we don’t make progress, necessarily. Vicars have randy daughters and randy daughters give birth to boys who in turn become vicars.

More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/8765444/Arguably-by-Christopher-Hitchens-review.html

Man of His Words

The New York Times | Sunday Book Review

"Anyone who occasionally opens one of our more serious periodicals has learned that the byline of Christopher Hitchens is an opportunity to be delighted or maddened — possibly both — but in any case not to be missed. He is our intellectual omnivore, exhilarating and infuriating, if not in equal parts at least with equal wit."

Don't miss the Book Review Podcast (Bill Keller on the career of Christopher Hitchens). 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/books/review/arguably-essays-by-christopher-hitchens-book-review.html

There's just one Hitch

The Australian Reviews Arguably.

LAST year, just before he was diagnosed with advanced oesophageal cancer, Christopher Hitchens published the unexpectedly moving memoir Hitch-22.

 "I soon enough realised when young," he revealed in that book, "that I did not have the true 'stuff' for [writing] fiction and poetry. And I was very fortunate indeed to have, as contemporaries, several practitioners of those arts who made it obvious to me, without unduly rubbing in the point, that I would be wasting my time if I tried."

 As a journalist, Hitchens has done everything with his time except waste it. He has made himself the key writer of the post-9/11 age. No novelist or poet has registered the texture of the past decade as pungently as Hitchens has in the essay form.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts-arc/theres-just-one-hitch/story-e6frg8nf-1226126501899

Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens

Reviewed by Vinton Rafe McCabe / New York Journal of Books

“Christopher Hitches has the eye of a painter and the literary skill of a novelist. He infuses his essays with the same narrative thrust that can be found in the most addictive fiction.”

"Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens proves as mercurial as the man himself; it is at times infuriating, tedious, educational, gloriously candid, and completely hilarious. The man has an opinion on everything—literally everything from the genius of Charles Dickens to the virtues of masturbation."

Read review here (nyjournalofbooks.com)

3 min. audio clip from Arguably, read by Simon Prebble: http://www.emusic.com/listen/#/audiobooks/book/Christopher-Hitchens-Arguably-MP3-Download/10103043.html

Christopher Hitchens on Latest Book: 'Might Be My Very Last'

Prolific writer and political journalist Christopher Hitchens will release a new book this September titled Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens. The first new book of essays since 2004, Arguably features a collection of essays previously written for Vanity Fair – of which he is a contributing editor – Slate, The Atlantic, and The New York Times.

Some titles include: “God of Our Fathers: The United States of Enlightenment”; “America the Banana Republic”; “Why Women Aren’t Funny”; “First, Silence the Whistle-Blower”; “Iran’s Waiting Game”; “Easter Charade”; “Words Matter”; and “Wine Drinkers of the World, Unite.”

Read More (christianpost.com)

Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens

In Stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.


Product Description
The first new book of essays by Christopher Hitchens since 2004, ARGUABLY offers an indispensable key to understanding the passionate and skeptical spirit of one of our most dazzling writers, widely admired for the clarity of his style, a result of his disciplined and candid thinking. Topics range from ruminations on why Charles Dickens was among the best of writers and the worst of men to the haunting science fiction of J.G. Ballard; from the enduring legacies of Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell to the persistent agonies of anti-Semitism and jihad. Hitchens even looks at the recent financial crisis and argues for arthe enduring relevance of Karl Marx. The book forms a bridge between the two parallel enterprises of culture and politics. It reveals how politics justifies itself by culture, and how the latter prompts the former. In this fashion, ARGUABLY burnishes Christopher Hitchens' credentials as-to quote Christopher Buckley-our "greatest living essayist in the English language."