Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens

ARGUABLY collects the finest work by America's foremost rhetorical Pugilist (The Village Voice) in one volume for the first time. Spanning four remarkable decades, this collection includes the author's masterful early writings on civil rights, Vietnam, and international incidents such as the Greek military junta, as well as his inflammatory — and now infamous — columns on the Clintons, the Catholic Church, Mother Theresa, radical Islam, and an array of meditations on contemporary politics and political figures. From his earliest articles for the New Statesman, where he worked alongside such writers as Martin Amis, Ian McEwan and numerous others, to pieces written after his emigration to the United States for the Nation, the Atlantic, Slate.com and Vanity Fair, these Selected Writings display his rare genius, indomitable wit and singular command of language. ARGUABLY is a definitive summation of one of the most dazzling and influential minds in American letters that should draw new readers as well as the author's decades-old fans who would for the first time have his most signature essays collected in one volume.

"How does one possibly narrate the essays of Christopher Hitchens while capturing the author's furious — and perhaps occasionally misguided — intensity and vigor? For this capacious collection of Hitchens's essays, narrator Simon Prebble wisely avoids that dilemma. Instead, he offers a dry, slightly formal delivery. Covering everything from Charles Dickens and J.G. Ballard to the recent financial crisis and global jihad, Hitchens mingles the literary with the political, using his erudition to hone arguments to a carefully wielded point. Prebble's controlled narration works to tone down some of Hitchens's force — the narrator simply poses arguments without bludgeoning the author's opponents — much to the benefit of this audio production. The sound is turned down, leaving Hitchens's ideas to come to the fore. A Hachette/Twelve hardcover. (Sept.)" Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

The first new collection 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 audio 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.