A fine new book argues that the contemporary Left could learn a lot from the life and work of the late polemicist Christopher Hitchens.
British-American journalist, essayist, author, and human bulldozer Christopher Hitchens intimidated nearly everyone who encountered him, whether in print, on television, or on a debate stage. “He likes the battle, the argument, the smell of cordite,” his best friend and novelist Martin Amis once observed. Nobody ever beat Hitchens in argument, not even when he was wrong.
His scathing wit, his barn-burner polemics, his prodigious output, his ability to demonstrate the depth and breadth of an entire classical education on a single page, his knack for speaking extemporaneously in perfectly formed paragraphs, and his near-photographic recall of virtually everything he ever read were peerless. The man could knock out a sparkling magazine column in 30 minutes after sinking an entire bottle of wine (always red, never white) at four o’clock in the morning.
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