An Evening with Christopher Hitchens

UPDATE II: September 2011
A trove of previously uncollected works, Arguably chronicles the moods and modes of Christopher Hitchens through his own, masterful prose.
UPDATE: ARGUABLY: Selected Essays, by Christopher Hitchens
February 2011
Spanning four decades, ARGUABLY collects Christopher Hitchens' finest essays, literary criticism and journalism in one volume for the first.
http://www.twelvebooks.com/content/books.asp


Lauren at Thoughts Thought Out posted about her visit to Washington D.C. last month and her chat with Christopher. Read her post here.

CH tells her “I just finished writing a book.."
Anyone heard or read anything on what book that would be? She doesn't have the details. Last year he said he'd re-chisel the Ten Commandments and publish a book. Could that be it? Sure, we'll know soon but we are a bit curious, aren't we?

Tunisia Grows Up

Here's hoping the Jasmine Revolution improves upon the legacy of Habib Bourguiba, the nation's first president.
By Christopher Hitchens

"Visiting Tunisia three years ago, I thought that it was easy enough to see the main problem. The state was publicly dedicated to modernity and secularism and development—what used so long ago to be called "Westernization"—but it didn't really trust its citizens to be grown-ups."
Read More (Slate)

Reflections on Political Violence

When Mumtaz Qadri shot Pakistani politician Salman Taseer, he didn't even bother to offer an excuse.

By Christopher Hitchens 

"The best political speech I ever heard was delivered by the late Paul Foot, scion of one of England's great radical and socialist families, at the Oxford Union in the late 1960s. The motion before the house was in favor of the African National Congress and its decision to renew "armed struggle" against the white supremacist regime in South Africa." 

Read more (Slate)

The Blair Hitch Project

By Christopher Hitchens

"His (Tony Blair) principal day job is to serve as mediator for the “Quartet” of powers that supervise the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.” This means regular efforts to reconcile Muslims, Jews, and Christians in the Holy Land. Cheer up, I want to tell him. At least it's a job for life."

Full Article (Vanity Fair)

How To Make a Decent Cup of Tea

Ignore Yoko Ono and John Lennon, and heed George Orwell's tea-making advice.
By Christopher Hitchens

"Now that "the holidays"—at their new-style Ramadan length, with the addition of Hanukkah plus the spur and lash of commerce—are safely over, I can bear to confront the moment at their very beginning when my heart took its first dip." Read More (Slate)

Christopher Hitchens, Hale

By Peter Robinson

"Dinner this evening--or, rather, since it has just gone midnight, yesterday evening--with the great historian Robert Conquest and the journalist provocateur Christopher Hitchens. Christopher looked better than he has in recent photographs in Vanity Fair, and he proved utterly himself, talking about books, politics, and history for nearly three hours. I offer it as a sign of his sweet indomitability that Hitch closed the evening by reciting, from memory, this poem:
Read More (http://ricochet.com)

Mr. Kissinger, Have You No Shame?

Ignore the recent excuses. Henry Kissinger's entire career was a series of massacres and outrages.
By Christopher Hitchens

"Until the most recent release of the Nixon/Kissinger tapes, what were the permitted justifications for saying in advance that the slaughter of Jews in gas chambers by a hostile foreign dictatorship would not be "an American concern?"
Read More (Slate)

The Pak-Af Problem

Are we committed to Afghanistan or to Hamid Karzai's government? By Christopher Hitchens

Friends of his would enjoy disputing whether his heart or his ego was the larger, but it was sad to know, as Richard Holbrooke's heart eventually burst, that he had strained a good deal of it in upholding a policy in which much of his best advice had been, or was being, ignored.
 Read More (Slate)

(1/8) Is There An Afterlife? Christopher Hitchens vs Shmuley Boteach

Christopher Hitchens debated Rabbi Shmuley at Cooper Union, New York on Thursday, September 16, 2010.





Play All 8 Videos

Free Speech / Off Topic added

Some DH visitors seem to have an urge to post and express themselves quite off topic to published posts. I've added a comment box where these views can be posted. So, stay on topic when commenting on posts, if you have something else to say, there's this comment box for that. It's a free speech box, so don't bother complaining on possible provocative or insulting comments. It's your choice if you want to go there.
Every now and then one stumbles upon non Hitchens material that one would like to share. A box like this is the appropriate place.
I don't know if this will catch on but it'll be an option for a while, if no comments are posted, I'll simply remove it.

The Hitch on Death

By John Rentoul

Christopher Hitchens, brooding on “how much faster I’m dying than anyone else” is interviewed by Oliver Kamm in today’s Times (pay wall).

Read More (independent.co.uk)

Christopher Hitchens and me

BY SOPHIE TARNOWSKA
"I met writer and polemicist Christopher Hitchens for the first time in 2008, here in Montreal. When I saw him again last month at the Munk debates in Toronto, I was shocked at the change cancer had wrought. He'd been diagnosed with esophageal cancer -the same cancer that had killed his father -this past June during the promotional tour for his memoir, Hitch-22."

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Christopher+Hitchens/3997097/story.html#ixzz18TGID5U2

Christopher Hitchens’s Jewish Problem

"The fact that Christopher Hitchens has a problem with the Jews has been an open secret for years. No one much likes to talk about it, and for various reasons his journalistic peers have remained silent on the subject. But it is nonetheless the case, and there is little sense in denying it."

I didn't first pay much attention to this and it's now a few days old but since it has made headlines on other blogs and sites, and in case you missed it and are interested, read Benjamin Kerstein's article here. (jewishideasdaily.com)

The Blair - Hitchens event in Toronto

By Peter Hitchens

Peter gives his view on the Blair debate. (Which he hasn't watched or listened to.)

"I'm asked to comment on my brother's encounter (styled by some a 'debate') with Anthony Blair in Toronto, recently broadcast on BBC radio. Delighted as I am that the BBC (which can and often does reduce an important Parliamentary event to three jokey minutes) has taken to broadcasting debates on major issues on Radio 4, I do wonder whether the habit will last, and why this particular one made it so swiftly on to the air."

Read More (http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk)

Thanks swh