For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports
by Christopher Hitchens
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Book Summary Information
Author: Christopher HitchensEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1994-09-17
ISBN: 0860916286
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Verso
Book Reviews of For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports
Book Review: HItchens -- powerful thinking, cogent writing, suspicious conclusions
Summary: 4 Stars
An outstanding book; while Hitchens is a powerful writer and superb analyst, his conclusions are often cynical and violently naive.
He still thinks that violence can solve problems. Unraveling the layers of secrecy lead him, too often to a few villains not to full analyses of villains.
No matter, reading him is educational, exciting, and pleasurable. His command of the language is delightful. At least, he is not afraid to be disagreeable; He give me hope that debate can actaully happen and that some people hide behind civility.
Summary of For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports
?For the sake of argument, one must never let a euphemism or a false consolation pass uncontested. The truth seldom lies, but when it does it lies somewhere in between.?
The global turmoil of the last few years has severely tested every analyst and commentator. Few have written 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.For the Sake of Argument ranges from the political squalor of Washington, as a beleaguered Bush administration seeks desperately to stave off disaster and Clinton prepares for power; to the twilight of Stalinism in Prague; from the Jewish quarter of Damascus in the aftermath of the Gulf War to the embattled barrios of Central America and the imperishable resistance of Sarajevo, as a difficult peace is negotiated with ruthless foes. Hitchens?s unsparing account of Western realpolitik in the end shows it to rest on delusion as well as deception.
The reader will find in these pages outstanding essays on political assassination in America as well as a scathing review of the evisceration of politics by pollsters and spin-doctors. Hitchens?s knowledge of the tortuous history of revolutions in the twentieth century helps him explain both the New York intelligentsia's flirtation with Trotskyism and the frailty of Communist power structures in Eastern Europe.
Hitchens's pointed reassessments of Graham Greene, P. G. Wodehouse and C. L. R. James, or his riotous celebration of drinking and smoking, display an engaging enthusiasm and an acerbic wit. Equally entertaining is his unsparing rogues? gallery, which gives us unforgettable portraits of the lugubrious ?Dr.? Kissinger, the comprehensively reactionary ?Mother? Teresa, the preposterous Paul Johnson and the predictable P. J. O?Rourke.
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