Christopher Hitchens - Letters to a Young Contrarian
Here you can read online Christopher Hitchens - Letters to a Young Contrarian full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2005, publisher: Basic Books, genre: Religion. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
Romance novel
Science fiction
Adventure
Detective
Science
History
Home and family
Prose
Art
Politics
Computer
Non-fiction
Religion
Business
Children
Humor
Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.
- Book:Letters to a Young Contrarian
- Author:
- Publisher:Basic Books
- Genre:
- Year:2005
- Rating:5 / 5
- Favourites:Add to favourites
- Your mark:
Letters to a Young Contrarian: summary, description and annotation
We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Letters to a Young Contrarian" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.
In the book that he was born to write, provocateur and best-selling author Christopher Hitchens inspires future generations of radicals, gadflies, mavericks, rebels, angry young (wo)men, and dissidents. Who better to speak to that person who finds him or herself in a contrarian position than Hitchens, who has made a career of disagreeing in profound and entertaining ways.This book explores the entire range of contrary positions-from noble dissident to gratuitous pain in the butt. In an age of overly polite debate bending over backward to reach a happy consensus within an increasingly centrist political dialogue, Hitchens pointedly pitches himself in contrast. He bemoans the loss of the skills of dialectical thinking evident in contemporary society. He understands the importance of disagreement-to personal integrity, to informed discussion, to true progress-heck, to democracy itself. Epigrammatic, spunky, witty, in your face, timeless and timely, this book is everything you would expect from a mentoring contrarian.
Christopher Hitchens: author's other books
Who wrote Letters to a Young Contrarian? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Hitchens Christopher
Hitchens Christopher
Hitchens Christopher
Christopher Hitchens
Hitchens Christopher
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Letters to a Young Contrarian — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work
Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Letters to a Young Contrarian" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.
Light
Font size:
↓
↑
Reset
Interval:
↓
↑
Bookmark:
Make
Table of Contents
The Art of Mentoring from Basic Books
Letters to a Young Lawyer
Alan Dershowitz
Alan Dershowitz
Letters to a Young Contrarian
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Letters to a Young Golfer
Bob Duval
Bob Duval
Letters to a Young Conservative
Dinesh DSouza
Dinesh DSouza
Letters to a Young Activist
Todd Gitlin
Todd Gitlin
Letters to a Young Therapist
Mary Pipher
Mary Pipher
Letters to a Young Chef
Daniel Boulud
Daniel Boulud
Letters to a Young Gymnast
Nadia Comaneci
Nadia Comaneci
Letters to a Young Catholic
George Weigel
George Weigel
Letters to a Young Actor
Robert Brustein
Robert Brustein
Also by Christopher Hitchens
Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
Blood, Class, and Empire:
The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship
The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship
A Long Short War:
The Postponed Liberation of Iraq
The Postponed Liberation of Iraq
Why Orwell Matters
Left Hooks, Right Crosses:
A Decade of Political Writing
A Decade of Political Writing
Orwells Victory
The Trial of Henry Kissinger
Unacknowledged Legislation:
Writers in the Public Sphere
Writers in the Public Sphere
No One Left to Lie To:
The Values of the Worst Family
The Values of the Worst Family
The Missionary Position:
Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice
Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice
For the Sake of Argument:
Essays and Minority Reports
Essays and Minority Reports
The Monarchy
Blood, Class, and Nostalgia:
Anglo-American Ironies
Anglo-American Ironies
Prepared for the Worst:
Selected Essays and Minority Reports
Selected Essays and Minority Reports
Hostage to History:
Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger
Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger
In memory of Peter Sedgwick
Preface
My dear X,
Now that its time to launch this little paper boat onto the tide, I thought I would write you a closing letter by way of beginning. While the book has been with its editors and printers, I have been occupied on several other fronts, as you know. And a stray question of yours floated into my mind: How do I respond when I see myself or my efforts abused or misrepresented in the public prints?
The brief answer is that I have become inured without becoming indifferent. I attack and criticise people myself; I have no right to expect lenience in return. And I dont believe those authors who say that they dont care about reviews or notices. However, it does tire me to read, time and again, reviews and notices that are based on clippings from earlier reviews and notices. Thus, theres always an early paragraph, usually written in a standard form of borrowed words, that says Hitchens, whose previous targets have even included Mother Teresa and Princess Diana as well as Bill Clinton, now turns to....
Of course, as you guessed, this is dispiriting. For one thing, it bores me to see my supposed profession reduced to recycling. Nobody ever even has the originality to say Hitchens, who criticised Mother Teresa for her warm endorsement of the Duvalier regime in Haiti. This is the surreptitious way in which dissenting views are marginalised, or patronised to death. However, it wasnt self-pity that prompted me to write. Let me tell you what happened to me in the course of a single month, between May and June of 2001.
At the direct request of the Vatican, I was invited to give evidence for the opposing side in the hearings on Mother Teresas impending canonisation. It was an astonishing opportunity to play Devils Advocate in the literal sense, and I must say that the Church behaved with infinitely more care and scruple than my liberal critics. A closed room, a Bible, a tape-recorder, a Monsignor, a Deacon and a Fathera solemn exercise in deposition, where I was encouraged to produce all my findings and opinions. Ill tell you all about it at another time; the point is that the record is not now the monopoly of the fundamentalists.
British television broadcast an exhaustive documentary on Princess Diana, giving (at last) proper space and time to those of us who did not subscribe to her cult. I was interviewed at some length, and didnt receive a fraction of the hysterical mailbag that was, not long ago, an occupational hazard. Who could make that souffl rise twice?
Slobodan Milosevic was taken to the Hague to face a tribunal. I didnt exactly rejoice at the way he was effectively bought from Serbia in exchange for promises of financial aid, but it is some years now since he undertook at Dayton to cooperate with the tribunal, and enough was enough. I thought of all the arguments Id had about Srebrenica and Sarajevo and Kosovo, and all the half-baked excuses that had been offered for doing nothing to stop Serbo-fascism, and all the times in Bosnia when the situation had seemed hopeless, and allowed myself to be quietly proud of what little Id done, as well as ashamed by how little that was.
Bill Clintons approving Presidential initials were found on a note written by his half-brother Roger, who had been engaged in trying to obtain a pardon for a drug-dealer and also engaged in explaining how hed come by a brick-thick block of travelers checks. There was the usual obfuscation about no proven quid pro quo but I noticed, in the aftermath of the Rich pardon, that it had been several months since Id been able to get into a fight over whether Clinton was a cheap crook or not. Believe me, I remember when this was otherwise.
Henry Kissinger, challenged on television to meet my accusation that he was responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, responded with a maniacal and desperate attempt to change the subject, and denounced me as a denier of the Nazi Holocaust. (He also followed custom in mentioning Mother Teresa and, for some reason, Jackie Kennedy.) This enabled me to bring legal proceedings against him, both for defamation in my own case and - via the discovery process - to demonstrate that he was a practised and habitual liar. Considering what I had said about him in print, the disproportion between my suing him and him suing me was evident to all. But I could prove that what I said was true, whereas he could not, and that is still a difference. (Adlai Stevenson once said to Richard Nixon: If you stop telling lies about me Ill stop telling the truth about you. I like the euphony, but Id have no right to make such a bargain with the man who devastated Cambodia and Cyprus and Chile and East Timor.)
So this was an amazing and wondrous month; perhaps the best of my life. (I finished my centennial study of George Orwell in the same period. Much more civilised to be writing about him than any of the above.) I tell you about it not just in order to boast, though there is that. It went to make up for many, many other months, when the celebrity culture and the spin-scum and the crooked lawyers and pseudo-statesmen and clerics seemed to have everything their own way. They will be back, of course. They are always back. They never leave. But their victory is not pre-determined. And there are vindications to be had as well, far sweeter than anything contained in the meretricious illusion of good notices or a good press.
I hope I shall be able to reinforce some of this in the following pages, which I once again thank you for provoking me to write.
Christopher Hitchens
Stanford, California
Independence Day 2001
Stanford, California
Independence Day 2001
Light
Font size:
↓
↑
Reset
Interval:
↓
↑
Bookmark:
Make
Similar books «Letters to a Young Contrarian»
Look at similar books to Letters to a Young Contrarian. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Hitchens Christopher
Hitchens Christopher
Hitchens Christopher
Christopher Hitchens
Hitchens Christopher
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Reviews about «Letters to a Young Contrarian»
Discussion, reviews of the book Letters to a Young Contrarian and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.