Love, Poverty, and War:

Christopher Hitchens
January 2005     ISBN: 1560255803

A contrarian collection of essays and reports by America's leading polemicist, this book takes its title from an antique saying: life is incomplete unless love, poverty and war have been experienced. In his introduction, Hitchens, one of the most controversial intellectuals of our day, reflects on how he has been touched by those discrepant states. In the book's opening section, "Love," Hitchens confronts the legacy of, among others, Kipling, Trotsky and Churchill, and celebrates Proust, Borges and Joyce--"This is a love that matures in the cask, if you will, and deepens with time. "Love" is postscripted with an "Americana" section that includes Hitchens's travels along both the Sunset Strip and Route 66, concluding with his moving exploration of patriotism in the wake of the September 11 attacks. "Poverty" features sustained polemics against religion, as well as more secular targets, including Michael Moore, David Irving and the creepy cult of the Kennedys. And "War" includes his excursions through Kurdistan, Pakistan and Iraq, but also his post-9/11 columns-- "I have been slandered...for what I said at the time, and so have taken care to reprint it, in the raw stages in which It first appeared, so as to try and show how my feelings gradually became more like thoughts. That was a condensed day of love, poverty, and war, all right."

Christopher Hitchens is a widely published polemicist and frequent radio and TV commentator. He is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School in New York.