Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays

by Christopher Hitchens

"I did not, I wish to state, become a journalist because there was no other 'profession' that would have me. I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information." Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays showcases America's leading polemicist's rejection of consensus and cliché whether he's reporting from abroad in Indonesia, Kurdistan, Iraq, North Korea, or Cuba, or when his pen is targeted mercilessly at the likes of William Clinton, Mother Theresa ("a fanatic, a fundamentalist and a fraud"), the Dalai Lama, Noam Chomsky, Mel Gibson and Michael Bloomberg. Hitchens began the nineties as a "darling of the left" but has become more of an "unaffiliated radical" whose targets include those on the "left," who he accuses of "fudging" the issue of military intervention in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet, as Hitchens shows in his reportage, cultural and literary criticism, and opinion essays from the last decade, he has not jumped ship and joined the right but is faithful to the internationalist, contrarian and democratic ideals that have always informed his work.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Politics, History, Philosophy, Journalism, Travel

482 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Christopher Hitchens was a British-American author, journalist, and literary critic known for his sharp wit, polemical writing, and outspoken views on religion, politics, and culture. He was a prolific essayist and columnist, contributing to publications such as The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, and The Nation.
A staunch critic of totalitarianism and organized religion, Hitchens became one of the most prominent public intellectuals of his time. His book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007) became a bestseller and solidified his place as a leading figure in the New Atheism movement. He was equally fearless in political criticism, taking on figures across the ideological spectrum, from Henry Kissinger (The Trial of Henry Kissinger, 2001) to Bill and Hillary Clinton (No One Left to Lie To, 1999).
Originally a socialist and supporter of left-wing causes, Hitchens later distanced himself from the left, particularly after the September 11 attacks, when he became a vocal advocate for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. His ideological shift, combined with his formidable debating skills, made him a controversial yet highly respected figure.
Hitchens was also known for his literary criticism, writing extensively on figures such as George Orwell, Thomas Jefferson, and Karl Marx. His memoir, Hitch-22 (2010), reflected on his personal and intellectual journey.
In 2010, he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer but continued to write and speak publicly until his death in 2011. His fearless engagement with ideas, incisive arguments, and commitment to reason remain influential long after his passing.

Reviews

[Varmint · Rating 3 out of 5]

there are moments when hitchens will assume the reader is familiar with some quip cyril connely made to evelyn waugh at a party in 1951. wouldn't be so bad if your understanding of the last three pages didn't depend on knowing the joke. just inconsiderate to those of us with public school educations.

still a great writer. i disagree with him on many issues. but feel compelled to read his views on a subject as a sort of check to my own prejudices.

[Shane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book captures the bombastic Hitchens in all his contrarian eloquence. He has an opinion on everyone and everything, backed by a lifetime in journalism that covered in-person visits to various hot-spots around the world and meetings with prominent people whom he likes to name-drop liberally.

Let’s see, according to Hitchens, Churchill was a charlatan (so were Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More); Kipling was a racist, homosexual, imperialist, sadist and anti-Semite; Huxley was interested in eugenics, breeding, and LSD; Graham Green too was an anti-Semite; Lord Byron was sexualized as a child by his female nurse; Borges wasn’t as libidinous as Joyce; Kennedy was a walking pharmacy; and Michael Moore’s movie Fahrenheit 9/11 was “an exercise in moral frivolity and a spectacle of abject political cowardice.” Got the picture?

Despite this very opinionated fellow, and they are often only opinions, for sometimes I found very little fact to support his positions, he must have lived a very eventful life by getting to the core of the difficult issues and asking the tough questions, especially of those in authority. Although a leftist, he idolized America, choosing to live there, but was also critical of his new home: “The US has been the patron of predatory regimes in five continents, exports violence by means of arms exports, and has evil clients.”

The most interesting sections were his on-location journalism pieces: travelling along Sunset Boulevard or on Route 66, visits to Cuba, Montenegro, North Korea, Kurdistan and Pakistan. He spends a lot of time covering 9/11 and the soul-searching that went on during its fallout. The anecdotes in each story are also very interesting and form a kind of flotsam gathered over the peregrinations of an itinerant journalist. There are some interesting book reviews with the focus more on the author than the work, although I inferred that his favourite writers got better treatment, writers such as Saul Bellow, Bob Dylan, and Leon Trotsky.

Writing from the personal is a powerful viewpoint, and Hitchens’ writing is more intellectual than journalistic, even though many of these articles are culled from journals like the New Spectator and Vanity Fair that he wrote for consistently. He accuses other writers of pleonasm, but his own verbosity knows no bounds. Evelyn Waugh is described as “The very rotundity is its own cumbrous self-criticism. If he (Waugh) became a byword for post-sodden Blimpery, it was because his face shaped itself to fit a mask that predated that heavy, bilious terminus.”

I’ve heard such a lot and viewed videos of this man who insisted that God didn’t exist even when he was in the last days of his life, suffering from cancer. Therefore reading this wide sampling of his writing helped to put him in context for me. Certainly a member of the angry young male writer cohort who came of age in the 60’s and 70’s, who captured the world in all its contrariness, and became contrarians themselves to gain a toe-hold on the platform of celebrity thinkers. Despite his bombast and contrary opinions, Hitchens seems to have cared for the world he lived in and exited so early.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow -- whatever one may think of Hitch's politics, the guy sure could write! Took me a while to get through this one, not because he's dry, but because the entries that interested me were so well done that I wanted the book to last longer.

What to expect: the essays are roughly divided into historical and literary criticism, travel and current events (best way I can put it), followed by ones focusing on 9/11 and Iraq (the book "ends" in 2004). The first section was the most difficult for me, not being familiar with some of the subject matter (Winston Churchill's story for instance), but I got Hitch's point easily enough. The travel narratives on Los Angeles and traveling Route 66 were outstanding, easily worth paying for individually themselves! The last section was highly insightful, although a bit depressing in hindsight; to be fair, he does manage to find evidence that a few areas of life in Iraq improved after 2003 (emphasis on that few). He goes out of way to be fair also when he's called in by the Vatican to give a not-so-flattering statement regarding Mother Theresa's nomination for sainthood.

Highly recommended!

[Mason McMillan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun Fact: Christopher Hitchens helped popularize a cocktail which, after his death in 2011, came to be referred to as the “Hitch Slap” or merely “The Hitch.” It is Johnnie Walker Black (no ice) with room temperature Perrier to taste, and it remains popular in Washington, DC to this very day. And like the drink that bears his name, Mr. Hitchens’s polemics always go down smooth. “Love, Poverty, and War” is no exception, especially when one reads it (as I did) on Puerto Rico’s sun-soaked beaches.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you come across a book of journals, chances are you won't read all of them, just the ones that interest you. If you do happen to pick this journal up with the intention of doing as such, make sure you read the North Korean story in "War" closer to the end.

It was fantastic. Everything Hitchens said felt like it had dual meaning. On the surface, completely cordial. But from a sceptical Western perspective, every second sentence cut like a knife against Pyong Yang.

Congrats Chris. If this is a collection of your finest work, you've done well with your career.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Time, then, is of the essence, and Proust is interested in slowing it down, if not exactly holding it up, so as to enable himself to take longer sips from the precious but evaporating fluid.”

Classic Hitchens over-the-coals raking:
“I can really measure redundancy only in English, and I had already noticed in Davis’s introduction a reference to ‘the wistful closing coda in the Bois de Boulogne.’ A coda can only be a closure, so the sin of redundancy (or tautology, or pleonasm) is one that Davis might be careful about stricturing in others. She also repeats the word ‘cutting’ in the brief passage above, when other terms of art and editing are available to her and when, surely, the most one can hope to achieve in the case of Proust is the reduction of repetition, not its elimination.”

“What temptation should one avoid above all, if one is a former professor of English at Cambridge? The temptation to be matey, or hip, or cool – especially if one is essaying the medium of popular music. But Ricks begins his book like this: ‘All I really want to do is – what exactly? Be friends with you? Assuredly I don’t want to do you in, or select you or dissect you or inspect you or reject you.’
The toe-curling embarrassment of this is intensified when one appreciates that Ricks is addressing his subject, not his reader. Why did he leave out the other verbs Dylan had in that song: simplify you, classify you, deny, defy, or crucify you? And surely, he’s already at least ‘selected’ him?”

“There is nothing very remarkable about being immortal; with the exception of mankind, all creatures are immortal, for they know nothing of death. What is divine, terrible, and incomprehensible is to know oneself immortal. I have noticed that in spite of religion, the conviction as to one’s own immortality is extraordinarily rare. Jews, Christians, and Muslims all profess belief in immortality, but the veneration paid to the first century of life is proof that they truly believe only in those hundred years, for they destine all the rest, throughout eternity, to rewarding or punishing what one did when alive.” Jorge Luis Borges

“And there was something more: the crucial four words in the greatest of all documents. The pursuit of happiness. Just to name that is to summarize and encapsulate all that is detested by the glacial malice of fundamentalism and tribalism. That’s what they can’t stand. They confuse it with hedonism and selfishness and profanity, and they have no idea. No idea at all.”

“All over the United States there are millions of people petrified at the idea they might be doing the wrong thing… In other words, they have acquired a bit of capital but are mortally afraid of being thought vulgar.”

“Also, I couldn’t help recalling Ricky Ray Rector, the man executed by Governor Clinton during the 1992 New Hampshire primary. So gravely impaired and lobotomized was he that, when they came to take him away, he explained that he was leaving a wedge of pecan pie ‘for later.’ Laid upon the gurney, he helped them find a vein for the IV because he thought they were doctors come at last to cure him.”

“They can deny it’s cruel, they can certainly make it less unusual, but they are still stuck with the task of running a premeditated state killing: Big Government at its worst. (When the French finally abolished the guillotine in 1981 they did so on the noble grounds that ‘It expresses a totalitarian relationship between the citizen and the state.’)

“But if an application of history as a continuous argument, and not a dull Whiggish series of ‘problems resolved,’ can be instilled, then a student entering college might be ready to attempt the pleasurable exercises of a reasonably trained mind.”

“No serious person is without contradictions. The test lies in the willingness or ability to recognize and confront them.”

“Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of ‘dissenting’ bravery.”

“I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible.”

Some of the wanted gangsters hiding out in Iraq by permission of Saddam Hussein:
Abu Nidal (blew up airports in Vienna and Rome)
“Chemical Ali” Yasin (mixed the chemicals for the first Trade Center bombing)
Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi (set up AQM – Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia)

According to the David Kay report, Saddam sent emissaries to meet in secret in Syria to attempt to buy a missile system from North Korea.

“Yet Moore is a silly and shady man who does not recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it because he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause, in front of credulous audiences, is everything.”

“But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States.” George Orwell

“A short word of advice: In general, it’s highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It’s also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history.”

“If Michael Moore had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD.”

“[Mother Teresa:] disliked any reconsideration of orthodox teaching, always taking the most extreme version of all dogmas. For example, when awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, she announced that the greatest threat to world peace was… abortion. And on other occasions she had proclaimed that abortion and contraception were morally equivalent. Logically, this would mean she believed that contraception was also a great – if not indeed the greatest – threat to world peace. “

“[Mother Teresa:] was adamantly opposed to the only policy that has ever alleviated poverty in any country – that is, the empowerment of women, and the extension of their control over their own fertility. Her famous Calcutta clinic was in fact nothing more than a primitive hospice – a place for people to die, and a place where medical treatment was vestigial or nonexistent. (When she became ill herself, she flew first-class to a private clinic in California.)… And she befriended a whole series of rich crooks and exploiters, ranging from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings & Loan to the hideous Duvalier dynasty in Haiti, having accepted from both large donations of money that had actually been stolen from the poor.”

“However, a respect for truth requires one to remember that for the first three decades of the argument the only serious anti-Zionists were Jewish. There were leftist Jews who thought that the Arabs of Palestine were being done an injustice. There were Orthodox Jews who thought Zionism was a blasphemy, because no return to Jerusalem was possible before the arrival of the Messiah. And there were liberal assimilationist Jews who thought that the future of the Jewish people lay in the Diaspora throughout the Western world, the scene of all its triumphs from Spinoza to Einstein.”

“My professional conclusion, then, is that the religious impulse lies close to the root of the authoritarian, if not the totalitarian, personality.”

“Just as one cannot make a child grow smaller, so the momentum and appetite for autonomy increase with the experience of it.”

“Pompous noises are made by the State Department about the ‘territorial integrity’ of the former Yugoslavia, as if that bastard and hybrid were being kept alive by anything but a death-support machine.”

“What toothsome local snacks might the ladies be offering [in Pyongyang:]? The choices turned out to be slices of dry bread and cups of warm water.”

“You could see the civilized world in the streets of Manhattan yesterday, as people of all faiths and shades kept calm, kept moving, kept in touch and kept up their solidarity. This is a strength that the sadists and fanatics do not possess and cannot emulate.”

“Very well: Does anyone suppose that an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza would have forestalled the slaughter in Manhattan? It would take a moral cretin to suggest anything of the sort; the cadres of the new jihad make it very apparent that their quarrel is with Judaism and secularism on principle, not with (or not just with) Zionism. They regard the Saudi regime not as the extreme authoritarian theocracy that it is, but as something too soft and lenient.”

“But the bombers in Manhattan represent fascism with an Islamic face, and there’s no point in any euphemism about it. What they abominate about ‘the West,’ to put it in a phrase, is not what Western liberals don’t like and can’t defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state. Loose talk about chickens coming home to roost is the moral equivalent of the hateful garbage emitted by Falwell and Robertson, and exhibits about the same intellectual content.”

“Did we not aid the grisly Taliban to achieve and hold power? Yes indeed ‘we’ did. Well, does this not double or triple our responsibility to remove them from power?”

“It’s often a bad sign when people defend themselves against charges which haven’t been made.”

“In the 1980s, Pakistan got a blank check from the U.S. to combat the Russians, and spend much of the check in building up the Taliban. Now it is getting another check and a brand-new interest-free mortgage in order to pretend that the Taliban are its enemy. It just doesn’t get any better than this.”

“Yet only once since the occupation began has there been a real barrage, and that was the extraordinary fusillade of joyous tracer and rifle fire that greeted the news of the death of Uday and Qusay. More rounds were fired that night than on all the other nights combined and doubled.”

“Still, the fact remains that the Bush and Blair administrations decided that it was easier to scare the voters than to try and persuade them, and simpler to stress the language of ‘threat’ than the discourse of human rights or the complexities of the Genocide Convention. Greatly to their shame, neither Bush nor Blair ever readied a bill of indictment, for war crimes and crimes against humanity, that could have been used as a warrant for intervention. They did not want to re-open that wretched file on their countries’ past collaboration with Saddam. This deceitful condescension has tainted a noble cause, I hope not irretrievably.”

[Sneha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Time and time again I find myself going back to 'what did Hitch think about this', whatever be the case for his opinions on everything ranging from Wilde, Bellow, Churchill, the Albanian nun, the American Dream, and his work as a prolific journalist covered on ground reports of Iraq and Bosnia, and the speeches he gave, and also simply because his mastery of the English language is simply unmatched by a good many proportion of those who are born to wield it.

It doesn't escape me that holding the Hitch's works as a basis for forming my opinions are not much far away from my own issue with how the religious hold one sacred text. Although this was the case some four years ago, and I have, for lack of a better word, grown, to think of my own on the topics which he wrote about with a bit more clarity than before, diving into this collection is supposed to be an exercise on how much I can withstand from praising every word the man ever wrote.

I worry if my criticisms of him stem from the fear of being a sycophant, rather than actual disagreements, even though they exist. Writing this when I have just started the book and shall update with a proper review after done with it entirely.

I. LOVE:
1. The reader is left a bit confused at first as to if this is love with how the Churchill piece starts, then is quickly reminded it is not a hagiography, but capturing the Briton in all his contradictions and flaws. Churchill's greatest legacy will be defying Hitler for reasons of principle, and even with his multiple failures as a statesman and a human, a long list of what-ifs is never doing anyone any good. Humanity crave for noble and lofty leaders, and he presented himself as one, and got the job done.
2. Kipling gives of the impression of a pompous grumbly figure who just happened to write well
3. The first time I saw actual love in this collection is towards Trotsky, and there is a bit of idolisation still left in his words for a man who is ex-Trotskyist. One could ask if the influence of Trotsky Hitch sees in the world now is a bit of exaggeration fueled by past love, (quite like how I note Hitchensian influences), although the piece manages to create a halo well.
3. The old Pyrrhonist was a hypocrite, taught a young Eric Blair at Eton, had his own LSD trips which later went on to him being immortalised in pop(song)culture. He reminded the world that 'there is no escape from anxiety and struggle', although 'it was a conclusion that was in many ways unwelcome to him'.

Edit:
Hitch is still the most articulate man I've read, and so maybe I should just read more. It takes some resisting to not be in awe at each and every phrase he details with the most apt descriptions and the clever comparisons he makes.
And as for the validity of the opinions themselves, there is a clear curve - whether it is a steep climb or slide is up to you - The Love and The Poverty are pure gems of works, and his own experiences with the subjects of the essays just enhances it all. Before September is high-class on-ground journalism that everyone in the profession must strive for, and whatever he wrote After September seems justified. It shows how a Brit who idolised the idea that was America was shaken to the core when the very forces he was pointing out to be potential dangers hit what for him, was the capitol of the world.

This could very well be his best 'book', for he himself chose his favourite works across years to be put in it. And it is shocking how his anlysis of the Israel-Palestine situation is spot on: "Neither Israel nor messianism can cure the irrational"

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

christopher hitchens could write a novel about the wart on his nose and i would happily read every word..the man can WRITE, and with more thought, humor and empathy that just about anyone alive. even if you disagree with him (which happens a surprising amount), the last thing you want to do is shut him up.

[Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the lit reviews of books I’ve never read, references to people and historical events I’m not familiar with, and plethora of words I had to search up, I enjoyed this and I’d say I learned a lot. Essentially just a smart, witty, and unapologetically honest British guy giving his takes on literature, sharing his tourism ventures in the US, arguing random topics, discussing hot-button issues in the aftermath of 9/11, and accounting his firsthand experience of US military endeavors in the Middle East.

[ThereWillBeBooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the first Hitchens that I read and it came out at an interesting juncture in his life, right in the middle of his move from left to right, and (for what it’s worth) right in the middle of my journey the other way. It’s been interesting to revisit. He remains an entertaining and engaging writer and his book reviews have stood the test of time. But what to make of his embrace of jingoism? (Or his conversion to freedom’s cause, if you are of that mindset.) Was it purely mercenary? Did he put his ear to the ground, test the wind and figure that the wars were coming and so best to roll with the tide? Was it genuine? Did such a sophisticated and sharp thinker really believe that any kind of freedom was to be the result of imperial conquest? Was he ever really all that sophisticated and sharp a thinker, or did it only seem that way when his views mirrored one’s own?

Honestly? I still don’t know. I still find him engaging and worthwhile even if I do find myself rolling my eyes a bit more. Reading against the grain, taking it all with a little more salt, which -perversely? Ironically?- is just the way you’d assume he’d want to be read.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ensayos y artículos con temáticas de la actualidad concentradas en el amor, la guerra y la pobreza. El autor nos expresa sin tapujos su opinión, me gustó sobre todo su particular forma de contar la historia de personajes (como Churchill) que tenemos una imagen producto muchas veces de lo que nos han querido que pensemos y no porque lleguemos a una conclusión propia.

Los artículos que realizó para Vanity Fair en mi opinión trata de intelectualizar una temática bastante plástica.

Recomiendo lectura.

[Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Love, Poverty, and War" is a testament to the breathtaking range of Christopher Hitchens' intellect and his unwavering commitment to principles. This collection of essays and articles showcases his sharp wit, keen insight, and unparalleled ability to penetrate to the heart of any subject. Hitchens' courage to voice contentious views, his eloquence, and his relentless pursuit of truth earn this work a well-deserved five-star rating.

Spanning a diverse array of topics, "Love, Poverty, and War" reflects Hitchens' commitment to understanding and explaining the world. The topics range from the personal to the political, and from the literary to the historical. His observations on love, poverty, and war - three constants of human experience - are particularly poignant, offering profound insights into the human condition.

Hitchens' writing, as always, is a masterclass in the power of the English language. His prose is precise, his arguments well-reasoned, and his conclusions thought-provoking. Whether he's reflecting on the state of global politics, analyzing a piece of literature, or recounting a personal anecdote, Hitchens' ability to captivate and provoke thought is unrivaled.

One of the standout aspects of this collection is Hitchens' fearless commitment to his principles. Whether you agree with his viewpoints or not, his refusal to back down from his beliefs, even in the face of fierce opposition, is admirable. His fearless critique of religious dogma, political corruption, and intellectual dishonesty underscores his reputation as one of the most forthright intellectuals of our time.

In summary, "Love, Poverty, and War" is an extraordinary collection that showcases the best of Christopher Hitchens' formidable intellect and unwavering principles. It's a book that challenges, informs, and ultimately inspires, making it a worthy addition to any reader's collection. For its breadth of topics, its incisive analysis, and its unwavering commitment to principles, it earns a well-deserved five-star rating.

[Austin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hitchens' commentary is sorely missed. If he sat up from the mud to look around, he'd go back to the grave screaming.

[Jon Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

For all he owed much of his reputation to his political journalism and his willingness to play devil’s advocate (once literally, as he details here in ‘The Devil and Mother Teresa’) the more I read of Hitchens the more I’m convinced that his writings on literature should be the ones he should be remembered by. Here they comprise the vast bulk of the ‘love’ section and are almost unfailingly fascinating, engaging critically with the texts in the purest sense of criticism. It added to my appreciation of the books covered that I had read and made me want to read the remainder.

The remaining sections, (‘poverty’ and ‘war’) amply illustrate the brilliance and weaknesses of Hitchens. His strength is the polemic and he’s rarely less than forceful when putting forward an argument. Of course, the problem with polemicists is that you gain only their viewpoint and this is troublesome when it comes to references to his debates – for instance, whilst he has an excellent point on Michael Moore’s films, should Moore have had right of reply? And it’s frustrating when he refers to a debate with Noam Chomsky where he only presents his interpretation of the facts and events, and on a matter such as America’s conduct post 9/11 it’s a tad self-serving; particularly when so much of it is triumphant and dismissive. Still, the great work in these sections comes from Hitchens being so willing to actually visit the sites of combat himself – I can’t say I’m in a rush to emulate him by voyaging to Kabul, Pyongyang and Baghdad.

If a piece or two on atheism were added this would pretty much represent all the subjects Hitchens wrote on, as it stands it acts as probably the best introduction to Hitchens of all his books.

[Jamey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was deeply moved by this book, again and again. I disagree with Christopher Hitchens about a number of things, but I have learned so much from reading him that I feel a mix of admiration and gratitude. I can only wish I had such a discerning sense of what was really going on in the world around me. This man was not only extremely well-read (something I have always aspired to, and have manfully attempted), he was fearless--which I certainly am not. I would never set foot in a war zone; Hitchens did his journalism in plenty of them, all over the world. He knew everyone, crossed rhetorical swords with the most able opponents, and never lost his gleaming sense of humor.

His death from cancer was a loss to the world, but he loved his cigarettes and it belonged to him to make the decisions that flavored his life and cut it relatively short, compared with what might have been. Even this now seems like part of something special that's gone, and I can't put my finger on it. Something about a masculinity that was thoroughly cosmopolitan, connected to the past, in touch, it seems, with the power and experience of many remarkable women and men, and quite independent of other people's expectations. He was a journalist of the highest order who could be both cocky and self-effacing, and never shrank from a confrontation with whatever his nature and experience prompted him to oppose. More than a merely moral (Roman) follower of rules, even self-made ones, though he clearly had some; he was an ethical (Greek) being who felt his way through history as it unfolded, guided by his particular sense of decency.

On the other hand, I was appalled by his frankly stupid essay on the Kennedys, which was no deeper or better informed than the writings of Noam Chomsky on the subject. Both authors appear ignorant of President Kennedy's career as a Senator who advocated for African independence; as a President who prevented a long series of potentially disastrous military conflicts, even as his hardline Cold Warriors tried to force him into battle; as a chief executive sabotaged by CIA deception, and insubordination from his own people at both State and Defense; a President who was murdered by Allen Dulles and his collaborators in CIA, Mafia, and right-wing Cuban exile circles, for moving decisively to end the Cold War, including the war in Vietnam. It disgusted me to read Hitchens' sneering, ad hominem attack on a human being he so thoroughly misunderstood. But one can't expect anybody to know everything, and Hitch certainly knew far more than I ever will about 20th Century history. So much for that.

Part of the way this book moved me was its brilliant narration of the author's experiences in Iraq before and after the U.S. intervention in 2003. At the time, I was sure this was just another violent American imperial grab for foreign oil. Like the rest of the left, or most of it, I was stunned by Christopher Hitchens' support for the Iraq War, which I saw as an inexplicable lurch to the right. There were good reasons to see it so cynically. I was focused on the well-established evils of Dick Cheney, whose plainly venal motivations seemed to me to define the whole enterprise, with the Bush crime family doing its usual business of oil, money, and force. Colin Powell refused to present "this bullshit" about WMDs to the U.N., until he caved and did it anyway. Everybody could tell they were lying, so we looked to realpolitik to discern their actual motivations. The atmosphere in the Dubya years was one of swaggering mendacity, especially after the authoritarianism of the Patriot Act had gutted the Bill of Rights, and the U.S. kicked aside the Geneva Conventions against torture as nothing more than a trivial inconvenience. I marched in New York carrying a sign that said "Stop this Racist War."

It never occurred to me that the United States, having supported Saddam Hussein, might have an obligation to get rid of the monster it had helped create. It never entered my mind that, quite apart from whatever Cheney and his hideous henchmen (Rumsfeld, etc.) had in mind, there were millions of Iraqis and Kurds who were living in a state of constant degrading terror from which the American military could in fact deliver them. True, there were atrocities committed by U.S. forces in Fallujah; there was the nauseating soldier Lindsey England and her fellow enthusiasts for torture and humiliation; and on a large scale, there was some quantity of waste, fraud, and abuse, about which I am no expert. Hitchens says little to nothing about all that. But he paints a very convincing picture of just how horrible the Baathist regime of Saddam really was, the staggering scale of its crimes against humanity, and how great a thing the overthrow of that regime turned out to be. I had completely failed to appreciate this at the time.

The articles collected in "Love, Poverty, and War" made me see the 2003 invasion of Iraq in a completely different light. I had been equally cynical about the American intervention in the former Yugoslavia, not without reason; but there, too, this book showed me a very good side of that particular exercise of military force which eventually put a stop to the fascistic aggression of Serbia under Milosovic. Indeed, the Iraq invasion of 2003 was just one of around fifteen major developments in world affairs that Hitchens discussed in these pages with compassion for civilians of every sort, with contempt for tyrants and bigots, and with insight, taste, humor, and a striking zest for life.

The book compelled me to recognize the limitations of my thinking. It made me question my pacifism, and stirred my curiosity as what other vistas of understanding might open up if I were to face the fact that sometimes it's necessary to fight, whenever horrors and risk can prevent even worse horrors and even larger risks.

I've read Christopher Hitchens' books on Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger, his atheism book, and another volume of collected articles called "And Yet." I look forward to the rest of his work, particularly the memoirs "Hitch-22" and "Mortality." I hope to read his books on Jefferson and on Thom Paine, and his Letters to a Young Contrarian... G-d willing.

[Gijs Limonard · Rating 5 out of 5]

The master polemicist, journalist, orator, public intellectual at work; what's not to like? Be sure to check out the works by the late great Hitch: God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Why Orwell Matters, Arguably: Selected Essays, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever, Mortality.

[Andrew]

I read this book several years ago after picking it up for a song in a great old bookstore in Chicago. After recently hearing about Hitchens' treatment for cancer, I revisited the book as a reminder that we could lose one of the most iconoclastic writers of our time. Hitchens is that rarest of writers today, a man of the left who really does care about liberal democracy. And while I don't always agree with him, I always admire the breadth of his knowledge (it seems like he's read everything under the sun) and his unremitting skill as a scribe. If he has a flaw as a thinker, it's his unremitting and somewhat illogical hostility to religion, but that's not really on display here in this fine collection of literary criticism, articles on Americana and of course, political commentary. Check out his dissection of the egregious Michael Moore if you're looking for a literary kick!

Get well, Christopher; the world would be a poorer place without your provocative voice.

[Gavin Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great collection of essays that reminded me of just what a good writer Hitchens was. Beyond his combative television interviews and his reputation for controversy, he really, really could put pen to paper. There are lots of interesting and entertaining essays here. The Medals of His Defeats, The Strange Case of David Irving, Why Americans Are Not Taught History, The Gospel According to Mel and, especially, Visit to a Small Planet were all highlights from the early part of the book. The really great writing here though is in the After September section. Hitchens pours his raw anger onto the page and we see in turns his compassion, his fury, and also, his clear sightedness, as he refuses to accept arguments that there could be any justification for such an atrocity.

[A.J. Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

"By no means the least of the consolations now available to the unbeliever, and to those who live outside the lines of conventional virtue, is the thought that if we turn out to be mistaken in our Cartesian wagers, and find ourselves in the long, long chute to a smoke-and-brimstone filled afterlife, Christopher will be there at the bottom to welcome us with a drink and, why not, a cigarette."

- D.D Guttenplan

[Mike Futcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christopher Hitchens writes, mid-way through this collection of typically astute and readable essays, that "No serious person is without contradictions. The test lies in the willingness or ability to recognize and confront them" (pg. 280). And by this definition, we can certainly gather from Love, Poverty and War that Hitchens was a serious person. This book is a delight to read, as Hitchens always is (though his later Arguably is the superior collection), with diverse and valuable observations on literature and geopolitics in particular. But having taken a line to open this review from the centre of his book, it seems appropriately complete that the best examples of his contradictions come from its beginning and end.

These bookend essays are at once among his most readable and his most contradictory. The first few essays – literary and political critiques of Churchill, Kipling, Trotsky and Aldous Huxley – compel you to see each of these figures in a new light, and the spectra of those lights are not always unwelcome. (Trotsky in particular, who – in my personal opinion – might have ended up denouncing communism altogether, had he lived, and become a left-leaning secular rationalist.) But Hitchens' Churchill essay evidences a disappointing (and uncharacteristic) willingness to accept conspiracy theories – on Churchill's foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor, the Lusitania sinking and General Sikorski's death – or at least to reproduce them without critical comment, which amounts to the same thing. In another contradiction, Hitchens exonerates Huxley, a writer he likes, for the same things – i.e. the man's contradictions – which serve as the basis for his attacks on Kipling (and Churchill), who he doesn't.

A similar tightrope walk between contradiction and the need to provide bracing polemic – or a 'chiaroscuro', to use one of Hitchens' favoured words – is starkly evident in the closing essays of the book. This is where the majority of criticisms of Hitchens seem to land (not without merit), for it is here that the man's writings from 2001 to 2004, strongly in favour of Bush's interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, are reproduced. It may be harsh to criticize in hindsight, but when Hitchens asks: "What if it works?" (pg. 475) and "Who knows what the mood will be like [here in liberated Iraq] a year from now?" (pg. 471), the reader in the present day can answer him, and they are not answers he would like. It can be hard to read his lauding, on page 469, of the American humanitarian "smart army" in 2003's Iraq, a bitter pill made even worse by the references on page 474 to Abu Ghraib – Saddam's torture chamber – six months before a new scandal broke regarding that place and in doing so giving conclusive proof of where the judgment of history was going with regards to the Iraq intervention. Some of these later essays can be hard to read in retrospect, for though they contain some of Hitchens' finest writing they have in many crucial ways been overtaken by the historical record.

And it is some of Hitchens' finest writing. Some of his early stuff (there are some essays from the 1990s here) lacks the spark of his later stuff, but that is because 9/11 seemed to light a fire under Hitchens where many of his contemporaries lapsed into timidity. His flurry of writings in the days after 9/11 still have the power to make you taste the iron in your blood, and not just because the 'war' that erupted in the wake of that outrage has been humiliatingly lost. When he writes of the new (and yet old) nature of the threat – "The Japanese at Pearl Harbor did not use kamikaze pilots; yesterday's 'day of infamy' needed only four civilian aircraft, stolen from the victim nation, while providing no enemy bold enough to accept the responsibility of being struck in return" (pg. 405) – you realize that it takes a lot of venomous cowardice on behalf of the perpetrators to make Pearl Harbor look honourable by comparison. And when he writes of "the feeble reluctance of the media to challenge anybody with apparently 'Islamic' credentials, no matter how spurious" (pg. 471), he could just as easily recycle the line – were he still alive – for an article in the present day. The essays in this final segment of the book give a lucid accounting of Saudi and Pakistani hypocrisy in particular, and it is dispiriting to read this now, knowing that we have the same enemies as we had on 10th September 2001, and not only are they not dead or defeated, they remain unmolested.

I did not appreciate it for a long time, but Love, Poverty and War is an incredibly appropriate title. As Hitchens tells us in his introduction, it is an old saying that "a man's life is incomplete unless or until he has tasted love, poverty and war" (pg. xi), and the period which this collection predominantly covers (2001-2004) witnessed Hitchens' growing pains; the formative period of his life, comprising of events which served as the catalyst for his political and moral principles, and the forging of a lens by which he could more clearly see the world which he was willing to defend in print, in speech and in action. He might have been proven wrong in some of the particulars, but he was imperishably right in the sentiment (for want of a better word), and it is the continued salience of such arguments which is why Hitchens endures.

[Jenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Heavy read, but interesting. Takes aim at Winston Churchill, Mother Theresa, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Mel Gibson, and allegedly oppressive no smoking regulations implemented by the Mayor of New York.

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't always agree with Mr. Hitchens but his arguments are compelling and his acerbic wit is a hoot 'n' a half.

[Mario · Rating 5 out of 5]

La consecuencia murió con Hitchens. Sería.

[Karen Woodring Miller · Rating 1 out of 5]

Should have named the book axes to grind and people to malign.

[Alethleia · Rating 5 out of 5]

"El amor, la pobreza y la guerra son, dicen, los elementos necesarios para la formación de un hombre"

[Randhir · Rating 4 out of 5]

One gets drawn into Hitchens scintillating prose, regardless of the topics of his essays. Some of the topics were of minimal interest to me but I nevertheless got drawn into reading them because he writes with such verve and his opinions are so well articulated (not all the time) that one goes ahead with the next sentence. The subjects of his essays are varied from high brow book reviews to reportage from troubled spots, to views on current happenings; Hitchens remains a trenchant critic, never hesitating with his rapier thrusts. His grammar is impeccable and it seems he makes it a point to select words not in current use, so that one has constantly to refer to the Dictionary. I find that one of the joys of reading him. The first part of his Book, Love, is a dissection of personalities.He is devastating about his views on Churchill, who at the moment is going through a bad phase as Tharoor and others have also been merciless with him. His reviews on Saul Bellow and Marcel Proust, frankly went above my head while reading about Huxley, Orwell (for whom he has a high regard), Leon Trotsky and Borges tend to whet ones appetite. His reflections on America are acute. I know one thing, even if given an opportunity I'll not be driving on Route 66. I thought he could have been more generous to Dylan. As far as Mayor Bloomberg is concerned he seems to be completely pissed off with him. This part ends with a poignant essay on the destruction of the Twin Towers which powerfully affected him. The next part, Poverty, reflects on varied topics. He is not a fan of Kennedy, whom he has implacably condemned, Dalai Lama, Michael Moore, Mel Gibson and Mother Teresa. While I would not like to fight his deathly logic about others, I will definitely take up cudgels on behalf of Mother Teresa. Despite her limitations, which he takes delight in exposing, there are no doubts in the millions of those affected by her grace that she was a saint. So Mr Hitchens, your atheism has coloured your prism very darkly indeed. The last part of his essays are on War and he is as good as ever. His dissection of Islam is as powerful as any I have read and his reading of the character of Pakistan stands the test of time. I recommend that the present Trump Administration read it to get its perspectives clear. The Author has courageously visited trouble spots which you and I would safely avoid. North Korea, Afghanistan, Montenegro, Kurdistan, Iraq, all feature in his essays. His views are prophetic in many ways. He ominously predicts the next world conflagration would start in Kashmir. For fans of Hitchens, nothing else was expected. Those who read him for the first time, this book will whet the appetite for more.

[Prashant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 8/10

I can't say I read every single essay in Love, Poverty, and War (pretty sure I nodded off during whatever he was saying about Martha Stewart, hopefully he'd forgive me for that), but most* of what I did read was brilliant.

--

Hitchens is at his best when skewering or at least questioning sacred cows (Churchill, Mother Theresa, JFK, the Dalai Lama, Bill Clinton to 90's Democrats, etc.), but my favorite essays from this collection don't fall into that category. Here's how I'd rank my favorites:

7) Visit to a Small Planet (on the People's Republic of Korea)

6) Huxley and Brave New World

5) Joyce in Bloom (on James Joyce, Ulysses, and the world's most famous handjob)

No idea what the fuck was going on here, but I am now committed to attempting to read this behemoth of a book

4) Havana Can Wait (on Cuba under Castro)

3) The Struggle of the Kurds (on the resilience of the Kurdish people)

2) Unfairenheit 9/11 (on Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11)

Ok, maybe this one does fall into the 'skewering' category, but I think Michael Moore has just enough critics to not qualify as a 'sacred cow.' My god this was brutal (and I say this as someone with not particularly positive feelings toward GWB or the decision to invade Iraq).

1) The Immortal (on an aging Jorge Luis Borges and a wonderful short story)

There is nothing very remarkable about being immortal; with the exception of mankind, all creatures are immortal, for they know nothing of death. What is divine, terrible, and incomprehensible is to know oneself immortal. I have noticed that in spite of religion, the conviction as to one’s own immortality is extraordinarily rare. Jews, Christians, and Muslims all profess belief in immortality, but the veneration paid to the first century of life is proof that they truly believe only in those hundred years, for they destine all the rest, throughout eternity, to rewarding or punishing what one did when alive.

(excerpt from The Immortal, by Jorge Luis Borges)

*I say "most" because the final section of the collection, "After September," is mainly filled with articles immediately preceding or following the invasion of Iraq. It's quite sad to read about the optimism felt not just by Hitchens (which, to be fair, was understandable given the amount of time he spent with the Kurds, who probably wanted Saddam overthrown more than anyone), but also by Iraqis. It feels like scenes from a novel or film in which the characters are happy but you know things are about to go south.

With that being said, this section did have a few reality checks to obnoxious, masochistic intellectuals that I greatly enjoyed.

[Hippocleides · Rating 4 out of 5]

As per usual, this is a collection of Hitch's essays in which the more literary-inclined segments might as well be written in Akkadian to my uncultured eyes, while the rest are immensely enjoyable. This is a particularly fascinating collection of essays as it features pieces from either side of 9/11--the event which took Hitchens from "the Left" to "neoconservatism." While I cannot be ultimately persuaded by articles like the last in this book, in which he romantically, to an almost maudlin degree, extols the virtues of the occupation of Iraq by coalition forces, I can certainly understand how he--who visited Iraq going back to the 70's and had a deep fondness for its people, watched his friend Salman Rushdie get fatwa'd, got engaged in the WTC, and fell in love with America--reaches the conclusions he did.

[Fraser Kinnear · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some great essays in here. My favorites included
- A sequence of great book reviews (my favorites were on Huxley, Greene, and Kingsley Amis, and Joyce)
- His trip down Sunset Blvd in LA in '95
- His finding petty laws to break in Bloomberg's NYC
- His disgust in being witness to some state-ordered executions
- THe US public education systems' shortcomings in teaching history
- His takedowns of the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa and Mel Gibson and Michael Moore
- Time he spent with the Kurds for Nat Geo in 1992 and North Korea in 2001

I wasn't aware of the spat that Hitchens had with Chomsky after 9-11, but I'm not surprised, considering Hitchens's position. The single essay the provide here appears to be just one of an open correspondance between them.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wavering between 3 and 4 stars. Hitchens could write so evocatively about so many different topics and this is a very good collection of essays written in the late-90s through 2003. The first section of book reviews was my least favorite, but the Americana section, specifically his trek along Route 66, picks things up. "The Devil and Mother Teresa" and "Blessed are the Phrasemakers" are two other standouts. The final section, which includes several essays in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, is pretty powerful.