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 siscernment 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 beleagurered 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 ascerbic wit. Equally entertaining is his unsparing rogues’ gallery, which gives us enforgettable portraits of the lugubrious “Dr.” Kissinger, the comprehensively reactionary “Mother” Teresa, the preposterous Paul Johnson and the predictable P.J. O’Rourke.

“This is high-velocity Hitchens ... stylish, avid, wittier and more wide-ranging than ever. His allies, of whom I count myself one, rejoice in the sureness of his aim. May his targets cower.” — Susan Sontag

“The nearest thing to a journalistic one-man band since I.F. Stone laid down his pen.” — Philadelphia Inquirer

“His gift is for clear thinking, for untangling, for carefully separating one thing from another, for subtle thinking and writing in a form — the article — which is open to bluster.” — Hanif Kureishi

Christopher Hitchens lives in Washington, D.C. and writes for Slate and the Daily Mirror and is contributing editor to The Atlantic Monthly and Vanity Fair.

Cloth
ISBN-13: 978 0 86091 435 8
US$60.00

Paper
ISBN-13: 978 0 86091 628 4
US$18.00

Other Verso books by
Christopher Hitchens:

The Trial of Henry Kissinger

Unacknowledged
Legislation: Writers in the
Public

The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger

The Elgin Marbles: Should They Be Returned to Greece?

No One Left to Lie To:
The Values of the Worst
Family