Christopher Hitchens

Una extraordinaria polémica contra la religión por uno de los intelectuales más brillantes del siglo XX y princpios del XXI, Christopher Hitchens. «Esta es la cuestión acerca de mis ideas y de quiene

Una extraordinaria polémica contra la religión por uno de los intelectuales más brillantes del siglo XX y princpios del XXI, Christopher Hitchens. «Esta es la cuestión acerca de mis ideas y de quiene

Mortalidad es la historia ejemplar de la resistencia de un hombre a retroceder al enfrentarse a lo desconocido, así como una penetrante mirada a la condición humana. El 8 de junio de 2010, durante la gira de promocion de su libro de memorias, Hitch-22, un insoportable dolor en el pecho y el torax dejo postrado a Christopher Hitchens en su habitacion de hotel en Nueva York. Como escribiria mas tarde en una de sus premiadas columnas en Vanity Fair, se vio deportado de repente del pais de los sanos al otro lado de la dura frontera que rodea la tierra de la enfermedad. A lo largo de los siguientes dieciocho meses, hasta su muerte en Houston el 15 de diciembre de 2011, siguio escribiendo con la misma frecuencia y brillantez que siempre, asombrando a sus lectores con su capacidad de trabajo en las peores condiciones. Durante su enfermedad, un cancer de esofago, Hitchens rechazo insistente y gallardamente el consuelo de la religion, y prefirio enfrentarse a la muerte mirandola de frente. En este emocionante relato de esos meses, Hitchens describe los tormentos de la enfermedad, discute sus tabues y analiza como transforma la experiencia humana y cambia la relacion del enfermo con el mundo que le rodea. Intenso y poderoso, atravesado de su caracteristica inteligencia, el testamento de Hitchens es una obra literaria valiente y lucida, una afirmacion de la dignidad y el valor del ser humano.La critica ha dicho: Su soltura no le abandono nunca, su compromiso fue apasionado y nunca descuido su oficio. Era el escritor consumado, el amigo brillante. En la celebre frase de Walter Pater, ardia "con esa llama dura como una gema". Hasta el final. Ian McEwan Su voz sigue siendo civilizada, escrutadora y dispuesta a vencer a todos sus enemigos. Colm Toibin

Christopher Hitchens... at his characteristically incisive best. --The TimesThomas Paine is one of the greatest political advocates in history. Declaration of the Rights of Man, first published in 1791, is the key to his reputation. Inspired by his outrage at Edmund Burkes attack on the uprising of the French people, Paines text is a passionate defence of mans inalienable rights.In Rights of Man Paine argues against monarchy and outlines the elements of a successful republic, including public education, pensions and relief of the poor and unemployed, all financed by income tax. Since its publication, Rights of Man has been celebrated, criticized, maligned and suppressed but here the polemicist and commentator Christopher Hitchens marvels at its forethought and revels in its contentiousness. Above all, Hitchens demonstrates how Thomas Paines book forms the philosophical cornerstone of the first democratic republic, whose revolution is the only example that still speaks to us: the United States of America.

In this vitriolic polemic, Christopher Hitchens takes on the myth surrounding the most divisive political figures in American political history: Bill Clinton and Hilary Clinton.By far the best of all the books on the Clinton era. - Edward SaidIn No One Left to Lie To, Christopher Hitchens portrays President Bill Clinton as one of the most ideologically skewed and morally negligent politicians of recent times. In a blistering polemic which shows that Clinton was at once philanderer and philistine, crooked and corrupt, Hitchens challenges perceptions - of liberals and conservatives alike - of this highly divisive figure.With blistering wit and meticulous documentation, Hitchens masterfully deconstructs Clintons abject propensity for pandering to the Left while delivering to the Right and argues that the presidents personal transgressions were inseparable from his political corruption.

Sunday Times bestsellerAnd Yet... gathers the previously uncollected essays of the late Christopher Hitchens into a final volume of peerless prose from one of the great thinkers of our times.Christopher Hitchens was an unparalleled, prolific writer, who raised the polemical essay to a new art form, over a lifetime of thinking and debating the defining issues of our times. As an essayist he contributed to the New Statesman, Atlantic Monthly, London Review of Books, TLS and Vanity Fair. Any publication of a volume of Hitchens essays was a major event on both sides of the Atlantic. Now comes a volume of Hitchens previously uncollected essays, covering the themes that define Hitchens the thinker: literature, religion and politics. These essays remind us, once more, of the fierce, brilliant and trenchant voice of Christopher Hitchens.

Christopher Hitchens iconclastic collection is the perfect companion to US-UK relations by the greatest Anglo-American writer of his generation.Since the end of the Cold War so-called experts have been predicting the eclipse of Americas "special relationship" with Britain. But as events have shown, especially in the wake of 9/11, the political and cultural ties between America and Britain have grown stronger. Blood, Class and Empire examines the dynamics of this relationship, its many cultural manifestations-the James Bond series, PBS "Brit Kitsch," Rudyard Kipling-and explains why it still persists. Contrarian, essayist and polemicist, Christopher Hitchens notes that while the relationship is usually presented as a matter of tradition, manners, and common culture, sanctified by wartime alliance, the special ingredient is empire; transmitted from an ancient regime that has tried to preserve and renew itself thereby. England has attempted to play Greece to the American Rome, but ironically having encouraged the United States to become an equal partner in the business of empire, Britain found itself supplanted.A deeply engaging voice - witty, elegantly sceptical, and with real intellectual sinew. I can think of no-one I would rather read on this subject. - Ian McEwan

In god is Not Great Hitchens turned his formidable eloquence and rhetorical energy to the most controversial issue in the world: God and religion. The result is a devastating critique of religious faithgod Is Not Great is the ultimate case against religion. In a series of acute readings of the major religious texts, Christopher Hitchens demonstrates the ways in which religion is man-made, dangerously sexually repressive and distorts the very origins of the cosmos. Above all, Hitchens argues that the concept of an omniscient God has profoundly damaged humanity, and proposes that the world might be a great deal better off without him.

Revisiting this selection of diaries and essay-reviews from the London Review of Books is restorative, an extended spa treatment that stretches tired brains and unkinks the usual habitual responses where Hitchens is concerned. James Wolcott in his introduction Christopher Hitchens was a star writer wherever he wrote, and the same was true of the London Review of Books, to which he contributed sixty pieces over two decades. Anthologised here for the first time, this selection of his finest LRB reviews, diaries and essays (along with a smattering of ferocious letters) finds Hitchens at his very best. Familiar betes noires - Kennedy, Nixon, Kissinger, Clinton - rub shoulders with lesser-known preoccupations: P.G. Wodehouse, Princess Margaret and, magisterially, Isaiah Berlin. Here is Hitchens on the (first) Gulf War and the Salman Rushdie Acid Test, on being spanked by Mrs Thatcher in the House of Lords and taking his son to the Oscars, on Americas homegrown Nazis and Acts of Violence in Grosvenor Square in 1968. Edited by the London Review of Books, with an introduction by James Wolcott, this collection recaptures, ten years after his death, a Hitch in time: barnstorming, cauterising, and ultimately uncontainable.

Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. With eloquent clarity, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope's awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry of the double helix.

Thomas Paine is one of the greatest political advocates in history. "Declaration of the Rights of Man", first published in 1791, is the key to his reputation. This book demonstrates how Thomas Paine''s book forms the philosophical cornerstone of the first democratic republic, whose revolution is the only example that still speaks to us: the USA.

"Esta es la cuestión acerca de mis ideas y de las que piensan como yo. Nuestra creencia no es una creencia. Nuestros principios no son una fe. No sostenemos nuestras convicciones dogmáticamente. Creemos firmemente que se puede vivir unavida eticamente sin religion. Y sabemos con certeza que el reverso es cierto: que la religion ha hecho que muchas personas no solo no se comporten mejor que otras, sino que consideren aceptable comportarse en modos que harian que gente a cargo de un burdel o de una limpieza etnica torcieran el gesto."De la Introduccion a Dios no es bueno.Siguiendo la tradicion de Por que no soy cristiano de Bertrand Russell, Christopher Hitchens presenta el argumento definitivo contra la religion. A traves de una serie de agudas lecturas de los principales textos religiosos, demuestra como la religion es producto del hombre, peligrosamente represiva en la cuestion sexual y distorsiona hasta los origenes del universo. Con su habitual claridad y fuerza, Hitchens presenta la opcion para una vida mas laica, basada en la ciencia y la razon, en la que el infierno deja su lugara la impresionante vision del universo del Telescopio Hubble y Moises y la zarza en llamas desaparecen ante la belleza y la simetria de la doble helice. Dios no es grande es un elogio a la posibilidad de una sociedad sin religion, que defiende que la idea de un Dios omnisciente ha dañado profundamente a la humanidad. Hitchens propone a cambio que el mundo estara mucho mejor sin"El".

Christopher Hitchens' 'God is Not Great' attempts to provide a genuine case against religion. With vitriolic attacks, the author pours scorn over the origins, teachings and values of the monotheistic religions. Surveying some traditional 'proofs' for the existence of God as well as core religious sentiments and attitudes, he marvels at the prospect of a society free from the control an an Omniscient, Omnipotent and Morally Perfect Being. The book, however, lacks the accuracy of an informed work often making cruel and broad generalisations about religious peoples and tenets. Though the aim of the book is a critique of religion, it ultimately collapses into a polemic.

We have been told countless times about the goodness of religion; Hitchens gives the case for the prosecution His indictments are trenchant and witty, and the book is a treasure house of zingers. Daniel C. Dennett, Boston Globe A tendentious delight, a caustic and even brilliant book Thank God for Christopher Hitchens. Mark Warren, Esquire God Is Not Great is the ultimate case against religion. In a series of acute readings of the major religious texts, Christopher Hitchens demonstrates the ways in which religion is man-made, dangerously sexually repressive and distorts the very origins of the cosmos. Above all, Hitchens argues that the concept of an omniscient God has profoundly damaged humanity, and proposes that the world might be a great deal better off without him. The anti-religion case has never been put so well, so comprehensively or so definitively as in this razor-sharp book Hitchens accumulates a devastating case Outstanding. A. C. Grayling, Independent on Sunday Hitchens is a grand rhetorician, and his double-barrelled shotgun of a book is high entertainment. Christopher Hart, Sunday Times Dazzling A campaign to put this glittering anti-theist tract on the national curriculum for religious education should begin here. Johann Hari, Independent

In this widely acclaimed biographical essay, Christopher Hitchens assesses the life, the achievements, and the myth of the great political writer and participant George Orwell.In true emulative and contrarian style, Hitchens is both admiring and aggressive, sympathetic yet critical, taking true measure of his subject as hero and problem.Answering both the detractors and the false claimants, Hitchens tears down the façade of sainthood erected by the hagiographers and rebuts the critics point by point.He examines Orwell and his perspectives on fascism, empire, feminism, and Englishness, as well as his outlook on America, a country and culture towards which he exhibited much ambivalence. Whether thinking about empires or dictators, race or class, nationalism or popular culture, Orwell''s moral outlook remains indispensable in a world that has undergone vast changes in the fifty years since his death.Combining the best of Hitchens''s polemical punch and intellectual elegance in a tightly woven and subtle argument, this book addresses not only why Orwell matters today, but how he will continue to matter in a future, uncertain world.Christopher Hitchens, one of the most incisive minds of our own age, meets Orwell on the page in this provocative encounter of wit, contention and moral truth.

The worlds greatest contrarian confronts his own death in this brave and unforgettable book. During the American book tour for his memoir, Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens collapsed in his hotel room with excruciating pain in his chest. As he would later write in the first of a series of deeply moving Vanity Fair pieces, he was being deported from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady. Over the next year he experienced the full force of modern cancer treatment. Mortality is at once an unsparingly honest account of the ravages of his disease, an examination of cancer etiquette, and the coda to a lifetime of fierce debate and peerless prose. In this moving personal account of illness, Hitchens confronts his own death - and he is combative and dignified, eloquent and witty to the very last.

I suppose that, if this collection has a point, it is the desire of one individual to see the idea of confrontation kept alive -- Christopher HitchensChristopher Hitchens is widely recognized as having been one of the liveliest and most influential of contemporary political analysts. Prepared for the Worst is a collection of the best of his essays of the 1980s published on both sides of the Atlantic. These essays confirmed his reputation as a bold commentator combining intellectual tenacity with mordant wit, whether he was writing about the intrigues of Reagans Washington, a popular novel, the work of Tom Paine, the man George Orwell, or reporting (with sympathy as well as toughness) from Beirut or Bombay, Warsaw or Managua.Hitchens writes clearly, from a well-stocked mind, and is free of the cant that affects many political journalists. - Publishers Weekly

A celebration of writers and their encounters with politics and public life from one of our greatest critics.Unacknowledged Legislation is a celebration of Percy Shelleys assertion that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. In over thirty magnificent essays on writers from Oscar Wilde to Salman Rushdie, and with his trademark wit, rigour and flair, master critic Christopher Hitchens dispels the myth of politics as a stone tied to the neck of literature. Instead, Hitchens argues that when all parties in the state were agreed on a matter, it was the individual pens that created the space for a true moral argument.I have been asked whether I wish to nominate a successor, and inheritor, a dauphin or delfino. I have decided to name Christopher Hitchens. - Gore Vidal

The test of this kind of book is for the reader to be able to open it anywhere and be drawn into the argument; its a test that Hitchens passes time and time again... He can be devilishly funny, but he is also capable of writing with acid seriousness. -- The IndependentThe global turmoil of the late 1980s and early 1990s severely tested every analyst and commentator. Few wrote with such insight as Christopher Hitchens about the large events - or with such discernment and wit about the small tell-tale signs of a disordered culture. First published in 1993, the writings in For the Sake of Argument range from the political squalor of Washington to the twilight of Stalinizm in Prague, from the Jewish quarter of Damascus in the aftermath of the Gulf War to the embattled barrios of Central America. Hitchens provides re-assessments of Graham Greene, P. G. Woodhouse and C. L. R. James, and his rogues gallery gives us portraits of Henry Kissinger, Mother Theresa and P. J. ORouke. The addition of pieces on political assassination in America, as well as a devastating indictment of the evisceration of politics by pollsters and spin doctors, and an entertaining celebration of booze and fags, complete this outstanding collection from a writer of unequalled talent.