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Atlantic Unbound | Archive
Christopher Hitchens
Hitchens began his career in England, in the 1970s, as a writer for the New Statesman and the Evening Standard. From 1977 to 1979 he worked for London's Daily Express as a foreign correspondent and then returned to the New Statesman as foreign editor, where he worked from 1979 to 1981. Hitchens has also served as the Washington editor for Harper's and as the U.S. correspondent for The Spectator and The Times Literary Supplement. From 1986 to 1992 he was the book critic at New York Newsday. He has also taught as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Pittsburgh; and the New School of Social Research. Born in 1949 in Portsmouth, England, Hitchens received a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1970. He lives in Washington, D.C. Recent articles by Christopher Hitchens: Where the Wild Things AreThe enduring, untamable appeal of Saki's short stories. Arrested DevelopmentIn Cyril Connolly’s classic memoir, the young grow rotten before they are ripe. A Revolutionary SimpletonA new account of Ezra Pound’s early years reveals his volatile genius—and prefigures the madness that would claim him. The 2,000-Year-Old PanicA newly reissued novel evokes the charms and hatreds of a lost world—and the enduring contradictions of anti-Semitism. Victoria’s SecretHow sex doomed the British Empire. The CourtierArthur Schlesinger’s journals are predictably sycophantic—and surprisingly good. The Great AssimilatorSaul Bellow’s genius lay in combining the high and the low, the reflective and the active, the ivory tower and the ghetto. Zuckerman UndoneIn Philip Roth’s latest, the characters are treated with disregard—and the readers with something like contempt. Literary CompanionHow Edmund Wilson made the labor of criticism into an art. Think of EnglandIan McEwan’s new novella evokes his homeland’s natural beauty and the straitened sexual manners of the early 1960s. The Woman Who Made IraqGertrude Bell scaled the Alps, mapped Arabia, and midwifed the modern Middle East. One Fraught EnglishmanThe turbulent life of Kingsley Amis. The OmnivoreClive James champions justice and common sense, with style. East is EastA new history of Orientalism reveals the vagary and variety of the field—and the danger of declaring any area of inquiry off-limits. Imperial FolliesIn 1956, the British stumbled in Suez, and the Soviets crushed the Hungarian uprising—revealing the fatal flaws of modern empire. Rich Man’s BurdenThe steely resolve of Andrew Carnegie. A French QuarrelWhat Algeria’s past can—and can’t—tell us about the present day. Poison PenThe exceptional insouciance of Jessica Mitford. Feckless YouthWhat Kennedy magic? The Persian VersionUnder the caked muck of theocracy in today’s Iran, ancient and lovely literary springs still bubble. No WayJohn Updike’s latest novel reveals his tin ear for critical times. Blood for No Oil!A new manifesto finds a model in the Truman era for returning liberals to political centrality in America. But the comparison is hopelessly inexact. Bottoms UpIan Fleming, the man behind James Bond, was a sadist, a narcissist, and a pervert. But he also saw past the confines of the Cold War. What’s Left?A new book by the West’s most influential Marxist shows him to be both “the most profound essayist wielding a pen” and on the wrong side of history. Downhill All the WayAn adroit new history of the British Empire in the post-Victorian era. Hurricane LolitaFifty years ago Vladimir Nabokov published his most notorious novel. Its ravishing effects can still be felt. Free and EasyBen Franklin, comic genius. Triumph at TrafalgarIn his victory over the French and the Spanish, Admiral Horatio Nelson's biggest guns were the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Hobbes in the HimalayasThe situation in horrible, magical modern Kashmir—where East battles East in a war that fuses the psychopathic and the apocalyptic—defies political analysis. But Salman Rushdie's new novel captures it as nothing else can. A Breath of Dust"I wasn't even bothering whether I understood what I was saying," T. S. Eliot said of The Waste Land. A new guide to the poem inadvertently suggests we should take him at his word. A Doomed Young ManNo, he was not Byron. But he certainly tried. A new look at Mikhail Lermontov and his classic work, A Hero of Our Time The Man Who Ended SlaverySlandered by craven abolitionists as unhinged, John Brown was in fact an eloquent, cool-headed tactician who succeeded in his long-range plan: launching a civil war. On Becoming AmericanWhat does it take for an immigrant to shift from "you" to "we"? Civilization and Its MalcontentsAlongside a "peace" demonstration in London, a crisis of micro-terrorism. I'll Be DamnedGraham Greene's most fervent loyalty was to betrayal. A Nice Bloody FoolBeneath the surface the vaguely preposterous Stephen Spender had a pith of seriousness and principle. SurvivorVictor Klemperer's meticulous diaries of daily life under East Germany's "soul-smashing" Communists reveal a man trying to convince himself not that the system was wrong but that it was right. The Honorable SchoolboyP. G. Wodehouse was a very advanced case of arrested development. Lucky for us. Mind the GapTurkey is everyone's idea of a "successful" modern Muslim state. A new novel will make you think twice. The ImmortalA new biography reaches the heart of the labyrinth—the intense and wondrous life of Jorge Luis Borges. The Old ManEven for educated readers, Leon Trotsky survives as part kitsch and part caricature. But the reissue of a majestic biography reveals him as he always was—a prophetic moralist. Young Men in ShortsThe 1908 Boy Scout manual was, our reviewer writes, "one of the very few books of the twentieth century that actually led to the formation of a worldwide movement." Poor Old WillieThe life of W. Somerset Maugham was a good deal more "exquisite, dramatic, torrid, and tragic"—especially in his splendid Mediterranean exile—than any of his works. Reactionary ProphetEdmund Burke understood before anyone else that revolutions devour their young—and turn into their opposites. Great ScotBetween Kipling and Fleming stands John Buchan, the father of the modern spy thriller. Pictures From An InquisitionThe work of the writer Victor Serge faultlessly captures the labrynth of bureaucratic incrimination into which the Soviet Union descended. American RadicalMark Twain developed an enormous and subversive personality—but Fred Kaplan's new biography illuminates it only in flickers. That Blessed Plot, That Enigmatic IsleIs there such a thing as "Englishness"—and if not, then why can't one imagine Samuel Johnson as an Italian? Where the Twain Should Have MetThe cosmopolitan Edward Said was ideally placed to explain East to West and West to East. What went wrong? Thinking Like an ApparatchikIn his new book Sidney Blumenthal presents a disconcertingly cynical yet naive account of the Clinton years. Aural HistoryThe doyen of capital insiders has written a misleading account of the debate that led to war. The Permanent AdolescentHis vices made Evelyn Waugh a king of comedy and of tragedy. Holy WritRecent writers on Islam need to be more stringent in their criticism. Stephen Schwartz is an exception. The Perils of PartitionOur author examines the political—and literary—legacy of Britain's policy of "divide and quit" The Wartime Toll on GermanyW. G. Sebald wrote of the pain of belonging to a nation that, in Thomas Mann's words, "cannot show its face" Political AnimalsA new book asks all the right questions about animal rights, even if it doesn't canvass all the possible answers. The Misfortune of PoetryByron's dramatic life has become indissoluble from his work. A Man of Permanent ContradictionsThe paradox underlying all of Kipling's work is a horror of democracy combined with an exaltation of the common man. The Man of FeelingLucky Jim, Kingsley Amis's comic masterpiece, may be the funniest book of the past half century. The Medals of His DefeatsOur author takes the Great Man down a peg or two—and still finds that Churchill was a great man. Stranger in a Strange LandThe dismay of an honorable man of the left. An Omnivorous CuriosityAnthony Powell, the author of A Dance to the Music of Time, also wrote one of the great literary memoirs of the twentieth century. |
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Christopher Hitchens contributes an essay on books each month to The Atlantic
Monthly. He is the author of more than ten books, including