Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens (born April 26, 1949) is an English journalist, author, critic, and self-proclaimed political gadfly. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford. He currently lives in Washington, DC in the United States. Over the years he has written for a variety of different publications, including Vanity Fair, The Nation, Harper's, and The New Yorker.

Hitchens is well-known for his ruffled and hard-drinking persona, as well as his unpredictable political views. A prolific writer, he has written many books and articles over the years, deliberately courting controversy. One book condemned Mother Teresa as a self-serving egotist. Another, No One Left To Lie To, was a fierce denunciation of Bill Clinton. A more recent tome put Henry Kissinger "on trial" as a world-class war criminal. He has also written a book arguing for the continuing relevance of George Orwell's political insights.

Though once regarded as a stalwart member of the Anglo-American left, Hitchens has recently made ferocious attacks on those leftists whom he regards as "unrepentant Stalinists". He has also been taking aim at leading radicals, such as Noam Chomsky, whom he accuses of making excuses for 'theocratic fascism'. His support of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq led to a cutting of his remaining ties with the radical left and to his resignation from his post as a long-time columnist for the left-wing magazine The Nation. Hitchens has recently been linked to the American neoconservative movement, and claims to be a supporter of many of their beliefs. At the same time, he does not accept the label himself, and professes to be still fairly "left" in certain social and economic matters. Because of his unpredictable and unsual mixture of political views, Hitchens has said that he no longer believes he can catagorize himself as a member of any one movement or ideology.

List of books written by Hitchens (This is only a partial list)

• Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship (Pub Group West, 2004)
• Why Orwell Matters (Basic Books, 2002), also published as Orwell's Victory (Allen Lane, 2002)
• A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq (Plume Books, 2003)
• Letters to a Young Contrarian (Basic Books, 2001)
• The Trial of Henry Kissinger (Verso, 2001)
• Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere (Verso, 2000)
• No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton (Verso, 2000)
• The Elgin Marbles: Should they be returned to Greece? (with essays by Robert Browning and Graham Binns) (Verso, March 1998)
• Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger with new Afterword (Verso, 1997)
• The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (Verso, 1995)
• For the Sake of Argument: Essays & Minority Reports (Verso, 1993)
• Blood, Class, and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1990)
• Imperial Spoils: The Curious Case of the Elgin Marbles (Hill & Wang, 1988)
• Cyprus (Quartet, 1984)

External links

• The Christopher Hitchens Web (http://users.rcn.com/peterk.enteract/), columns, articles, interviews, etc.
• Fraternally yours, Chris (http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/id138.htm). By Norman Finkelstein.
• A few words of fraternal admonition to "Norm" Finkelstein (http://users.rcn.com/peterk.enteract/fink.html)

pt:Christopher Hitchens

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia article. Browse Wikipedia for more information.