Books Recommended by Christopher Hitchens
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Tortilla Flat
John Steinbeck
Source: "[The main character] manages to lay so many women that, afterward, even the females who didn’t receive his attentions prefer to claim, rather than appear to have been overlooked, that they were included, too." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Collected Works of P. G. Wodehouse
PG Wodehouse
Source: "How can I forget the moment when [I] learned that to be amusing was not to be frivolous and that language—always the language—was the magic key as much to prose as to poetry?" - Christopher Hitchens
3 recommenders
The Captive Mind
Czeslaw Milosz
Source: "I was very struck by the courtesy and grace of this famous polemic and by the way that [the author] combined firmness on his own part with an understanding of the position of others." - Christopher Hitchens
2 recommenders
The Gulag Archipelago (3 books)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Source: "Once [the author] succeeded in getting [this series printed], it became obvious that something terminal had happened to the edifice of Soviet power." - Christopher Hitchens
The Fall of Berlin 1945
Antony Beevor
Source: "[The author's] heart-freezing account [...] of the rape and murder and humiliation that fell on Germans in the territory taken by the Soviet army in 1945." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Diaries
George Orwell
Source: "Can greatly enrich our understanding of how [the author] transmuted the raw material of everyday experience into some of his best-known novels and polemics." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
This Was the Old Chief's Country
Collected African Stories
Doris Lessing
Source: "[Combines] the sad indistinctness of a melancholy memoir with the very exact realization that a huge injustice had been done to the 'native' inhabitants of the land." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Regeneration (3 books)
Pat Barker
Source: "Magnificent." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Grass Is Singing
A Novel
Doris Lessing
Source: "[Combines] the sad indistinctness of a melancholy memoir with the very exact realization that a huge injustice had been done to the 'native' inhabitants of the land." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Persuasion
Jane Austen
Source: "Captain Frederick Wentworth in [this book], is partly of interest to the female sex because of the 'prize' loot he has extracted from his encounters with Bonaparte's navy." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Raj Quartet
The Jewel in the Crown, The Day of the Scorpion
Paul Scott
Source: "Had spoken to my depths because it understood that the treason at midnight in 1947, and the monstrous birth of a spoiled theocracy in Pakistan, was a tragedy for the English too." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Covering Islam
How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World
Edward W. Said
Source: "It was with [the author's] much lesser effort, [this book], that I began to realize that there was an apparently narrow but very deep difference between us." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Snow
Orhan Pamuk
Source: "From reading [this book] one might easily conclude that all the Armenians of Anatolia had decided for some reason to pick up and depart en masse." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Hitler
1889-1936 Hubris
Ian Kershaw
Source: "Since [Hitler's] suicide, no one has fully explained how a talentless crank was able to turn Europe into a charnel house. [This book] supplies a piece of the puzzle." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Sword of Honour Trilogy
Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen & Unconditional Surrender
Evelyn Waugh
Source: "When you read [this trilogy], you will straightaway notice that the veterans of the first world war are the instructors of the novices of the second world war." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Doctor Faustus
The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn As Told by a Friend
Thomas Mann
Source: "The narrator of [this book] is relating his story against the clock, as the German homeland finds itself pulverized and encircled in the spring of 1945." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
A Dance to the Music of Time
Third Movement
Anthony Powell
Source: "When you read [this book], you will straightaway notice that the veterans of the first world war are the instructors of the novices of the second world war." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Source: "[The author] found he'd taken on all the great American themes, from the original 'dream' itself to the corresponding loss of innocence." - Christopher Hitchens
A Struggle for Power
The American Revolution
Theodore Draper
Source: "A very good history of the general events without which the American Revolution couldn't have taken place or would have taken a different form." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Enigma of Arrival
V. S. Naipaul
Source: "While recently rereading [this book], I was struck all over again by the breathtakingly observant operations of [the author's] eye and brain." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
1984
George Orwell
Source: "We were all expected to read Animal Farm and [this book], which had been placed on the syllabus as part of the curriculum of the Cold War." - Christopher Hitchens
The Bell Jar
A Novel
Sylvia Plath
Source: "When I myself first read [this book], the phrase of hers that most arrested me was the one with which she described her father's hometown." - Christopher Hitchens
2 recommenders
A Dream of John Ball
Illustrated
William Morris
Source: "[Wrote that] men fight for things and then lose the battle, only to win it again in a shape and form that they had not expected." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Humboldt's Gift
Saul Bellow
Source: "I was able to return [Martin Amis] the favor in a way which was to help change his life in turn, by pressing on him a copy [of this book]." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Meaning of Hitler
Sebastian Haffner
Source: "You can chuck out your Alan Bullock and Joachim Fest and Hugh Trevor-Roper biographies, in my opinion, and read only [this] relatively short book." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Broken Compass
Peter Hitchens
Source: "Contains several assertions and affirmations that make me desire to be wearing a necklace of the purest garlic." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Redundancy of Courage
Timothy Mo
Source: "If my mighty, critical pen could flash from its scabbard and secure a vast public for any unjustly neglected author, it would flash for [this author]." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
An Insular Possesion
Timothy Mo
Source: "If my mighty, critical pen could flash from its scabbard and secure a vast public for any unjustly neglected author, it would flash for [this author]." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Complete Poems by Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Source: "I think [people] should read [this author]. In particular they should read 'Dulce et Decorum Est.' The poem that first arrested me." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
My Name Is Red
Orhan Pamuk
Source: "[With this book, the author] became a kind of register of this position, dwelling on the interpenetration of Islamic and Western styles." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Microcosm
A Portrait of a Central European City
Norman Davies
Source: "Illustrates [Wroclaw's] eminence as a hub of Bohemian and Prussian life as well as the epicenter of the Silesian question." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Yellow Dog
Martin Amis
Source: "You might think that the contempt shown by the reporters for both their subjects and their readers is overdone, but you would be wrong." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Animal Liberation
The Definitive Classic of the Animal Movement
Peter Singer
Source: "The parts of [this famous book] that I find most impressive are the deadpan reprints of animal-experiment 'reports.'" - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
Source: "[The author] essentially recast his friend Thomas Carlyle’s pessimistic version of the French Revolution in fictional form in [this book]." - Christopher Hitchens
A Clergyman's Daughter
George Orwell
Source: "In these pages, I found some specimens of exactly the lower-middle-class family that was familiar to me from life." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Coming Up for Air
George Orwell
Source: "In these pages, I found some specimens of exactly the lower-middle-class family that was familiar to me from life." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Ship
C. S. Forester
Source: "The odds in tonnage and gunnery are adjusted in favour of the British side by sheer discipline, pluck and morale." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Complete Short Stories of Saki
H. H. Munro
Source: "Begin with, say, 'Sredni Vashtar' or 'The Lumber-Room' or 'The Open Window.' Then see whether you can put the book down." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Temptation of Jack Orkney
and Other Stories
Doris Lessing
Source: "[This story] was so good, and [it] seemed so much to know what I might be thinking myself, that I was almost afraid to read on." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Threatening Storm
The Case for Invading Iraq
Kenneth M. Pollack
Source: "One of the best pieces of closely marshaled evidence and reasoning ever to emerge from the wonk-world." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
George Orwell
Source: "In these pages, I found some specimens of exactly the lower-middle-class family that was familiar to me from life." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Company Of Critics
Social Criticsm And Political Commitment In The Twentieth Century
Michael Walzer
Source: "[In this book, the author] says that most of his friends and colleagues have never even visited Washington except to protest." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Daniel Deronda
George Eliot
Source: "Can and should be defended from the faint praise and outright sneering which have been directed at it." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Our Man in Havana
Graham Greene
Source: "[The author]'s ability to evoke a sense of place and time, [...] are encoded in this book as in no other." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Clinton Tapes
Conversations with a President, 1993 - 2001
Taylor Branch
Source: "[The author] would tape his own memories of [his talks with Bill Clinton] on the drive back home. [This book] is the consequence." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Two Faces of Islam
Saudi Fundamentalism and Its Role in Terrorism
Stephen Schwartz
Source: "Argues that in order to appreciate the pluralist, tolerant side of Islam, we must confront its ugly, extremist side." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Cruiser
Warren Tute
Source: "[In this book], my father appears under the name (no first or 'Christian' name) of Lieutenant Hale." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Shame
A Novel
Salman Rushdie
Source: "[Anatomizes] the heap of madnesses and contradictions that went to make up the nightmarish state of Pakistan." - Christopher Hitchens
2 recommenders
War And Peace
Leo Tolstoy
Source: "At the age of twelve I had summoned the nerve to borrow from the headmaster, and to read [this book]." - Christopher Hitchens
On Chesil Beach
Ian McEwan
Source: "Evokes [the author's] homeland's natural beauty and the straitened sexual manners of the early 1960s." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Peace And Its Discontents
Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process
Edward W. Said
Source: "At [the author's] request I even wrote an uninspired introduction to [this book], but my heart was not quite in it." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Bonfire of the Vanities
A Novel
Tom Wolfe
Source: "Shortly after I arrived in New York, [this author] claimed to have diagnosed the same syndrome in [this book]." - Christopher Hitchens
3 recommenders
Beyond a Boundary
C.L.R. James
Source: "Suggests that in several ways [cricket] is not really a 'sport' at all, but more of a classical art form." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Doctor Zhivago
Boris Pasternak
Source: "[The author] was perhaps not such a fool when he wrote in [this book] that all conceptions are immaculate." - Christopher Hitchens
The Protestant Establishment
Aristocracy and Caste in America
E. Digby Baltzell
Source: "[The acronym 'WASP' was] first minted by [this author in this book], the term stood for 'White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.'" - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Savage God
A. Alvarez
Source: "Returns often to the suicide of Cesare Pavese, who took his own life at the apparent height of his powers." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley
Source: "In [this book], one can often detect strong hints of a vicarious approval of what is ostensibly being satirized." - Christopher Hitchens
The Benn Diaries
The Definitive Collection
Tony Benn
Source: "Recorded a meeting of like-minded members of Parliament the day after the fatwah." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number
Jacobo Timerman
Source: "The book above all that clothed in living, hurting flesh the necessarily abstract idea of the desaparecido." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Borges
A Life
Edwin Williamson
Source: "[This] biography reaches the heart of the labyrinth—the intense and wondrous life of Jorge Luis Borges." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Infidel
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Source: "Describes the escape of a young Somali woman from sexual chattelhood to a new life in Holland." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommenderCain
A Mystery
Lord Byron
Source: "Actually a very moving and despairing assault on biblical literalism and servile human credulity." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Case of Comrade Tulayev
Victor Serge
Source: "Many good judges regard as the earliest and best fictional representation of the show trials." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Memoirs of an Anti-Semite
A Novel in Five Stories
Gregor Von Rezzori
Source: "Evokes the charms and hatreds of a lost world—and the enduring contradictions of anti-Semitism." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Dominion
The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy
Matthew Scully
Source: "Asks all the right questions about animal rights, even if it doesn't canvass all the possible answers." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Jefferson and His Time
Dumas Malone
Source: "It is an honor, even when it is not a pleasure, to register disagreement with [this book]." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Lucky Jim
Kingsley Amis
Source: "[The author managed] to synthesize the comic achievements of Evelyn Waugh and P. G. Wodehouse." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Decline and Fall
Evelyn Waugh
Source: "Have somehow made all this mania and ritual appear 'normal,' even praiseworthy." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Darkness at Noon
A Novel
Arthur Koestler
Source: "I was re-reading [this book] for what felt like (and quite possibly was) the third time in a month." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Wolf Hall
Hilary Mantel
Source: "A service to the history it depicts, and puts the author in the very first rank of historical novelists." - Christopher Hitchens
2 recommenders
Cruelty and Silence
War, Tyranny, Uprising and the Arab World
Kanan Makiya
Source: "About the Saddam tyranny and the wars and famines and plagues it had sponsored." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The File
Penn Kimball
Source: "A well-controlled masterpiece of frigid outrage at America’s betrayal of a loyal citizen." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Writers and Politics
Conor Cruise O'Brien
Source: "Influenced me enormously when I first found it in a public library in Devonshire in 1967." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Holidays in Hell
P. J. O'Rourke
Source: "We all take some intellectual baggage when we set off, but [this author's], is positively weighed down." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Reading Lolita in Tehran
A Memoir in Books
Azar Nafisi
Source: "A study of the relations between literature, sexuality, and power under Muslim theocracy." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The House of the Spirits
Isabel Allende
Source: "The 'subject' is assuredly family life, which is also the tempestuous subtext of much of [the author]'s nonfiction." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Daughter of Fortune
Daughter Of Fortune, Book 1
Isabel Allende
Source: "The 'subject' is assuredly family life, which is also the tempestuous subtext of much of [the author]'s nonfiction." - Christopher Hitchens
2 recommenders
Portrait in Sepia
Daughter Of Fortune, Book 2
Isabel Allende
Source: "The 'subject' is assuredly family life, which is also the tempestuous subtext of much of [the author]'s nonfiction." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Hons and Rebels
Jessica Mitford
Source: "These pages describe the steady, determined evolution of une femme serieuse." - Christopher Hitchens
2 recommenders
The Wind Blows Away Our Words
Doris Lessing
Source: "Somewhat too romantic an account of the rebels fighting the Red Army in Afghanistan." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
How Green Was My Valley
How Green Was My Valley, Book 1
Richard Llewellyn
Source: "The transition to me between reading 'books for boys' and 'adult reading' was [this book]." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
At Canaan's Edge
America in the King Years, 1965-68
Taylor Branch
Source: "A noble edifice of work about the United States in the era of Martin Luther King." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Pillar of Fire
America in the King Years 1963-65
Taylor Branch
Source: "A noble edifice of work about the United States in the era of Martin Luther King." - Christopher Hitchens
2 recommenders
Parting the Waters
America in the King Years 1954-63
Taylor Branch
Source: "A noble edifice of work about the United States in the era of Martin Luther King." - Christopher Hitchens
4 recommenders
Imperialism at Bay
The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire, 1941-1945
William Roger Louis
Source: "As its title implies, [this book] is more prepared to call things by their unambiguous names." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Great Terror
A Reassessment
Robert Conquest
Source: "Predated Solzhenitsyn by some years in providing a morbid anatomy of Stalinism." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Lesser Evil
The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1945-59
Victor Klemperer
Source: "There is a horrid fascination in reading this day-by-day chronicle as it unfolds." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Adolf Hitler My Part in His Downfall
War (and Peace) Memoirs, Book 1
Spike Milligan
Source: "About being a shambolic conscript in some forgotten cookhouse in the wartime British Army." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Judgment Of Paris
Gore Vidal
Source: "I winced with recognition when I first read the expression 'British teeth' in [this book]." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Kim
Rudyard Kipling
Source: "[I] re-read it in one session, marveling again at how fine it is." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Bosnia
A Short History
Noel Malcolm
Source: "One of the best books I've ever read. I have no choice but to say so." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Platform
Michel Houellebecq
Source: "Was almost proscribed by law in France before being properly distributed." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Atomised
Michel Houellebecq
Source: "Showed [the author] to be a highly evolved product of post-1960s disillusionment in France." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Whatever
Michel Houellebecq
Source: "Showed [the author] to be a highly evolved product of post-1960s disillusionment in France." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Wolf by the Ears
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
John Chester Miller
Source: "For me the most various and illuminating account of the slavery question." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Day Stalin Died
Doris Lessing
Source: "[Deserves] reprinting in any anthology of the prose of the 20th century." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Minima Moralia
Reflections from Damaged Life
Theodor Adorno
Source: "Made a beautiful corkscrew or double-helix-shaped aphorism about the Hays Office." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Monument
Art and Vulgarity in Saddam Hussein's Iraq
Kanan Makiya
Source: "Possibly the most penetrating of his many books about Saddam and Saddamism." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Victorian England
Portrait of an Age
G.M. Young
Source: "[One of] the two greatest freehand exercises in English periodization." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Strange Death of Liberal England
George Dangerfield
Source: "[One of] the two greatest freehand exercises in English periodization." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
They Fought Back
The Story of the Jewish Resistance in Nazi Europe
Yuri Suhl
Source: "Combats the wretched image of European Jews as fatalistic and passive." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Lady Chatterley's Lover
D.H. Lawrence
Source: "Plainly intended to suggest that the gamekeeper had sodomized his boss’s wife." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Moor's Last Sigh
Salman Rushdie
Source: "One of [this author's] less-regarded but most magical and musical fictions." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov
Source: "Instead of making you want to write, [makes] you wonder why you bother." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Prophet Outcast
Trotsky 1929-1940
Isaac Deutscher
Source: Christopher Hitchens mentioned this as one of his favorite books in a C-SPAN interview in 2007.
1 recommender
Greenmantle
Richard Hannay, Book 2
John Buchan
Source: Christopher Hitchens mentioned this as one of his favorite books in a C-SPAN interview in 2007.
1 recommender
The Mask of Anarchy
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Source: "One of the finest hymns of hate to authority to have come down to us." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism
Bertrand Russell
Source: "Was the first and in many ways the most penetrating critique." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Theatres of Memory
Past and Present in Contemporary Culture
Raphael Samuel
Source: "Still a potent and eloquent reminder of a braver time." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Animal Farm
George Orwell
Source: "There is a timeless, even transcendent, quality to this little story." - Christopher Hitchens
Holy Bible
-
Source: "[The best document] in human history that [is] the product of a committee." - Christopher Hitchens
A Dance to the Music of Time
First Movement
Anthony Powell
Source: "[The author's] complex, majestic, rhythmical twelve-volume novel sequence." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque
Source: "I became consumed with the subject [of World War I] and got hold of [this book]." - Christopher Hitchens
3 recommenders
Ecology of Fear
Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster
Mike Davis
Source: "[A] depiction of a coming environmental and societal apocalypse." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Rebel Land
Unraveling the Riddle of History in a Turkish Town
Christopher de Bellaigue
Source: "I would recommend [this book] of exceptional interest and scholarship." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Armenian Golgotha
A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1918
Grigoris Balakian
Source: "I would recommend [this book] of exceptional interest and scholarship." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Great Soul
Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India
Joseph Lelyveld
Source: "[Questions] the moral heroism of India's most revered figure." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Faggots
Larry Kramer
Source: "The book of still another friend, [the author]’s ultrahomosexual effort." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Republic of Fear
The Politics of Modern Iraq
Kanan Makiya
Source: "[The author's] path-breaking anatomy of the Ba'ath regime." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Watching the Door
Drinking Up, Getting Down, and Cheating Death in 1970s Belfast
Kevin Myers
Source: "The most witty and penetrating first-hand account of [1970s Belfast]." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde
Source: "One of the few faultless three-act plays ever written." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
History of the Conquest of Mexico
William H. Prescott
Source: "Emboldened by the sheer bulk of the thing, I swerved into [this book]." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Southern California
An Island on the Land
Carey McWilliams
Source: "Was, and still is, considered more or less the book to beat." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The End of Faith
Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
Sam Harris
Source: "[The author is] one of the finest volunteers in this cause." - Christopher Hitchens
2 recommenders
In Between the Sheets
Ian McEwan
Source: "By then, 'everyone' had been mesmerized by [this book]." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
First Love, Last Rites
Ian McEwan
Source: "By then, 'everyone' had been mesmerized by [this book]." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Minty Alley
C.L.R. James
Source: "Plainly influential on the early writings of V.S. Naipaul." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Long Affair
Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800
Conor Cruise O'Brien
Source: "The most eloquent of the anti-Jeffersonian nonfictions." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Maps for Lost Lovers
Nadeem Aslam
Source: Christopher Hitchens said he was reading this book in a C-SPAN interview in 2007.
1 recommender
The Adventures of Augie March
Saul Bellow
Source: "[The author's] most superbly rendered fictional creation." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The New York Intellectuals
The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s
Alan M. Wald
Source: "Shows the germinal, contradictory force of revolutionary politics." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Memoirs of a Revolutionary
Victor Serge
Source: "One of the finest autobiographies of that same century." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Source: "I couldn’t sleep for two nights after first reading [this book]." - Christopher Hitchens
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Source: "Leaves an ineradicable 'scratch on the mind.'" - Christopher Hitchens
2 recommenders
Move Your Shadow
South Africa, Black and White
Joseph Lelyveld
Source: "The best anatomy of the topic that I've yet read." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
I Will Bear Witness, Volume 2
A Diary of the Nazi Years: 1942-1945
Victor Klemperer
Source: "Don't start [this book] late at night, you will not get to bed." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
I Will Bear Witness, Volume 1
A Diary of the Nazi Years: 1933-1941
Victor Klemperer
Source: "Don't start [this book] late at night, you will not get to bed." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Satanic Verses
A Novel
Salman Rushdie
Source: "[Appears] not to be written by [a human being]." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Middlemarch
George Eliot
Source: "[Appears] not to be written by [a human being]." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
In Search of Lost Time
Marcel Proust
Source: "[Appears] not to be written by [a human being]." - Christopher Hitchens
3 recommenders
Children in Exile
James Fenton
Source: "An essential complement to their predecessors." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Shameful Act
Taner Akçam
Source: "The only Turkish historian to have talked of genocide." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Bomb in My Garden
The Secrets of Saddam's Nuclear Mastermind
Mahdi Obeidi
Source: "A memoir by Saddam Hussein’s chief nuclear physicist." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Defending the West
A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism
Ibn Warraq
Source: "The best critique of ['Orientalism' by Edward W. Said]." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Fireflies
Shiva Naipaul
Source: "One of the great tragicomic novels of our day." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Pity of It All
A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743-1933
Amos Elon
Source: "The best history of the German-Jewish relationship." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Rachel Papers
Martin Amis
Source: "A huge critical and commercial grand slam." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Power
A Radical View
Steven Lukes
Source: "[The author was] more celebrated still for [this book]." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh
Source: "Discourses on aspects of the Bacchic and the Dionysian." - Christopher Hitchens
2 recommenders
The Cruel Sea
Nicholas Monsarrat
Source: "[I read this book] about 50 times before I was 15." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Burr
A Novel
Gore Vidal
Source: "The best fictional re-creation of the period." - Christopher Hitchens
2 recommenders
The Donkeys
Alan Clark
Source: "A rugged study of British Great War generalship." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Covenant with Death
John Harris
Source: "An anti-war British novel of the trenches." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Anarchist Portraits
Paul Avrich
Source: "Charming and melancholy album of silhouettes." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Oxford Shakespeare
The Complete Works
William Shakespeare
Source: Christopher Hitchens mentioned Shakespeare's work in the "Hitch-22" book.
1 recommender
Bitter Lemons
Lawrence Durrell
Source: "[The author's] beautiful but patronizing memoir." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Silent Angel
Heinrich Böll
Source: "Unflinchingly discusses the ruins and the corpses." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Voltaire's Bastards
The Dictatorship of Reason in the West
John Ralston Saul
Source: "[The author's] critique of impure reason." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Principia Mathematica
Volume One
Bertrand Russell
Source: "[The author's] most imposing work is probably [this book]." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Jaguar Smile
Salman Rushdie
Source: "About a voyage to revolutionary Nicaragua." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Homage to Catalonia
George Orwell
Source: "I was fairly soon immersed in [this book]." - Christopher Hitchens
The Caged Virgin
An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Source: "I would urge you all to go out and buy [this book]." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The World Is What It Is
The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul
Patrick French
Source: "Astonishing (and astonishingly authorized) biography." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
In Flanders Fields
The 1917 Campaign
Leon Wolff
Source: "A revisionist history of the First World War." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Serious Concerns
Wendy Cope
Source: Christopher Hitchens said this author is one of his favorite poets.
1 recommender
The Collected Poems of G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton
Source: Christopher Hitchens said this author is one of his favorite poets.
1 recommender
The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats
W. B. Yeats
Source: Christopher Hitchens said this author is one of his favorite poets.
2 recommenders
Selected Poems
James Fenton
Source: Christopher Hitchens said this author is one of his favorite poets.
1 recommender
Collected Poems
W. H. Auden
Source: Christopher Hitchens said this author is one of his favorite poets.
2 recommenders
Collected Poems
Robert Conquest
Source: Christopher Hitchens said this author is one of his favorite poets.
1 recommender
The Complete Poems
Philip Larkin
Source: Christopher Hitchens said this author is one of his favorite poets.
1 recommender
Nightfrost in Prague
Zdenek Mlynar
Source: "[The author's] enthralling memoir." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Martyr's Day
Chronicle of a Small War
Michael Kelly
Source: "[The author's] book about the 'first' Gulf War." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Terminal Moraine
James Fenton
Source: "[The author's] first collection of published poems." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
1 recommender
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway
Source: "Influenced me very greatly." - Christopher Hitchens
- 1 recommender
Language and Silence
George Steiner
Source: "[The author's] imposing collection of essays." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Prophet Unarmed
Trotsky 1921-1929
Isaac Deutscher
Source: "[Part of a] magnificent trilogy." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Prophet Armed
Trotsky 1879-1921
Isaac Deutscher
Source: "[Part of a] magnificent trilogy." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
1 recommender
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Karl Marx
Source: "[The author's] best-ever essay." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Black Jacobins
Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
C.L.R. James
Source: "[The author's] monumental work." - Christopher Hitchens
2 recommenders
Money
A Suicide Note
Martin Amis
Source: "The Great English Novel of the 1980s." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Source: "[The author's] electrifying first book." - Christopher Hitchens
2 recommenders
1 recommender
Christianity
The First Three Thousand Years
Diarmaid MacCulloch
Source: "I recommend it very highly." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
2 recommenders
Constitutional Law
Cases-Comments-Questions
William B. Lockhart
Source: "Great attendant volume." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
1 recommender
2 recommenders
1 recommender
1 recommender
3 recommenders
America Alone
The End of the World as We Know It
Mark Steyn
Source: "A welcome wake-up call." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
1 recommender
1 recommender
The Mackerel Plaza
A Novel
Peter De Vries
Source: "Could make you laugh out loud." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
By Any Means Necessary
Trials And Tribulations of the Making of Malcolm X
Spike Lee
Source: "Very interesting." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Persian Boy
Alexander the Great, Book 2
Mary Renault
Source: "[A] marvelous novel." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Great Melody
A Thematic Biography of Edmund Burke
Conor Cruise O'Brien
Source: "Tremendous biography." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
1 recommender
1 recommender
40 Days and 40 Nights
Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, Oxycontin®, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania
Matthew Chapman
Source: "I recommend." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Dreyfus
Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century
Ruth Harris
Source: "Such an exciting book." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
1 recommender
Alexander
The Ambiguity of Greatness
Guy Maclean Rogers
Source: "Very absorbing." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
A Long Long Way
Dunne Family, Book 3
Sebastian Barry
Source: "Brilliantly done." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
1 recommender
Reflections on the Revolution in France
Edmund Burke
Source: "Imperishable book." - Christopher Hitchens
2 recommenders
The Paranoid Style in American Politics
Richard Hofstadter
Source: "Endlessly consultable." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
The Siege
The Saga of Israel and Zionism
Conor Cruise O'Brien
Source: "A great book." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
1 recommender
1 recommender
1 recommender
Main Currents of Marxism
The Founders - The Golden Age - The Breakdown
Leszek Kolakowski
Source: "Astonishing trilogy." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
Selling Hitler
The Extraordinary Story of the Con Job of the Century
Robert Harris
Source: "Brilliant." - Christopher Hitchens
1 recommender
1 recommender
1 recommender
1 recommender
1 recommender
1 recommender
1 recommender
1 recommender
7 books
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