Christopher Hitchens

An outstanding collection of some of the best pieces that Christopher Hitchens wrote for the London Review of Books . 'Revisiting this selection of diaries and essay-reviews from the London Review of Books is restorative, an extended spa treatment that stretches tired brains and unkinks the usual habitual responses where Hitchens is concerned.' James Wolcott in his introduction Christopher Hitchens was a star writer wherever he wrote, and the same was true of the London Review of Books , to which he contributed sixty pieces over two decades. Anthologised here for the first time, this selection of his finest LRB reviews, diaries and essays (along with a smattering of ferocious letters) finds Hitchens at his very best. Familiar bêtes noires - Kennedy, Nixon, Kissinger, Clinton - rub shoulders with lesser-known preoccupations: P.G. Wodehouse, Princess Margaret and, magisterially, Isaiah Berlin. Here is Hitchens on the (first) Gulf War and the 'Salman Rushdie Acid Test', on being spanked by Mrs Thatcher in the House of Lords and taking his son to the Oscars, on America's homegrown Nazis and 'Acts of Violence in Grosvenor Square' in 1968. Edited by the London Review of Books , with an introduction by James Wolcott, this collection recaptures, ten years after his death, 'a Hitch in time': barnstorming, cauterising, and ultimately uncontainable.

Christopher Hitchens was an unparalleled, prolific writer, who raised the polemical essay to a new art form, over a lifetime of thinking and debating the defining issues of our times. As an Essayist he contributed to the New Statesman, Atlantic Monthly, London Review of Books, TLS and Vanity Fair. Any publication of a volume of Hitchens' essays was a major event on both sides of the Atlantic. Now comes the last of the last; a volume of Hitchens' previously unpublished essays, covering the themes that define Hitchens the thinker: literature, religion and politics. These essays remind us, once more, of the fierce, brilliant and trenchant voice of Christopher Hitchens.

The first new book of essays by Christopher Hitchens since 2004, Arguably offers an indispensable key to understanding the passionate and skeptical spirit of one of our most dazzling writers, widely admired for the clarity of his style, a result of his disciplined and candid thinking. Topics range from ruminations on why Charles Dickens was among the best of writers and the worst of men to the haunting science fiction of J.G. Ballard; from the enduring legacies of Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell to the persistent agonies of anti-Semitism and jihad. Hitchens even looks at the recent financial crisis and argues for the enduring relevance of Karl Marx. The book forms a bridge between the two parallel enterprises of culture and politics. It reveals how politics justifies itself by culture, and how the latter prompts the former. In this fashion, Arguably burnishes Christopher Hitchens' credentials as (to quote Christopher Buckley) our "greatest living essayist in the English language."

Rare book

Christopher Hitchens, political journalist, cultural critic, public intellectual and self-described contrarian, is one of the most controversial and prolific writers of his generation. His most recent book, God Is Not Great, was on the New York Times bestseller list in 2007 for months. Like his hero, George Orwell, Hitchens is a tireless opponent of all forms of cruelty, ideological dogma, religious superstition and intellectual obfuscation. Once a socialist, he now refers to himself as an unaffiliated radical. As a thinker, Hitchens is perhaps best viewed as post-ideological, in that his intellectual sources and solidarities are strikingly various (he is an admirer of both Leon Trotsky and Kingsley Amis) and cannot be located easily at any one point on the ideological spectrum. Since leaving Britain for the United States in 1981, Hitchens thinking has moved in what some see as contradictory directions, but he remains an unapologetic and passionate defender of the Enlightenment values of secularism, democracy, free expression, and scientific inquiry. The global turmoil of the recent past has provoked intense dispute and division among intellectuals, academics, and other commentators. Hitchens writing during this time, particularly after 9/11, is an essential reference point for understanding the genesis and meaning of that turmoil#151;and the challenges that accompany it. This volume brings together Hitchens most incisive reflections on the war on terror, the war in Iraq, and the state of the contemporary Left. It also includes a selection of critical commentaries on his work from his former leftist comrades, a set of exchanges between Hitchens and various left-leaning interlocutors (such as Studs Terkel, Norman Finkelstein, and Michael Kazin), and an introductory essay by the editors on the nature and significance of Hitchens contribution to the world of ideas and public debate. In response, Hitchens provides an original afterword, written for this collection.p pWhatever readers might think about Hitchens, he remains an intellectual force to be reckoned with. And there is no better place to encounter his current thinking than in this provocative volume.

"From Hitchens's earliest interviews to his final published interview with Richard Dawkins just before his death, this collection covers the brilliant career of Christopher Hitchens and tackles everything from atheism, his controversial support of the Iraq War, to America's march toward theocracy."--Provided by publisher.

The test of this kind of book is for the reader to be able to open it anywhere and be drawn into the argument; it's a test that Hitchens passes time and time again... He can be devilishly funny, but he is also capable of writing with acid seriousness. -- The Independent The global turmoil of the late 1980s and early 1990s severely tested every analyst and commentator. Few wrote with such insight as Christopher Hitchens about the large events - or with such discernment and wit about the small tell-tale signs of a disordered culture. First published in 1993, the writings in For the Sake of Argument range from the political squalor of Washington to the twilight of Stalinizm in Prague, from the Jewish quarter of Damascus in the aftermath of the Gulf War to the embattled barrios of Central America. Hitchens provides re-assessments of Graham Greene, P. G. Woodhouse and C. L. R. James, and his rogues' gallery gives us portraits of Henry Kissinger, Mother Theresa and P. J. O'Rouke. The addition of pieces on political assassination in America, as well as a devastating indictment of the evisceration of politics by pollsters and spin doctors, and an entertaining celebration of booze and fags, complete this outstanding collection from a writer of unequalled talent.

God Is Not Great makes the ultimate case against religion. In a series of acute readings of the major religious texts, Christopher Hitchens demonstrates the ways in which religion is man-made, dangerously sexually repressive, and distorts the very origins of the cosmos. Above all, Hitchens argues that the concept of an omniscient God has profoundly damaged humanity, and proposes that the world might be a great deal better off without "him."

God Is Not Great makes the ultimate case against religion. In a series of acute readings of the major religious texts, Christopher Hitchens demonstrates the ways in which religion is man-made, dangerously sexually repressive, and distorts the very origins of the cosmos. Above all, Hitchens argues that the concept of an omniscient God has profoundly damaged humanity, and proposes that the world might be a great deal better off without "him."

Over the last thirty years, Christopher Hitchens has established himself as one of the world's most influential public intellectuals. His originality, bravery, range, and wit made him first a leading iconoclast of the political left and then, later in his career, a formidable advocate of secular liberalism. When the Twin Towers were attacked in September 2001, Hitchens was re-energised again, quickly emerging as one of the fiercest and most influential advocates of war on Iraq. In this long-awaited and candid memoir, Hitchens re-traces the footsteps of his life to date, from his childhood in Portsmouth, with his adoring, tragic mother and reserved Naval officer father; to his life in Washington DC, the base from which from he would launch fierce attacks on tyranny of all kinds. Along the way, he recalls the girls, boys and booze; the friendships and the feuds; the grand struggles and lost causes; and the mistakes and misgivings that have characterised his life. Hitch-22 is, by turns, moving and funny, charming and infuriating, enraging and inspiring. It is an indispensable companion to the life and thought of our pre-eminent political writer.

Over the course of his 60 years, Christopher Hitchens has been a citizen of both the United States and the United Kingdom. He has been both a socialist opposed to the war in Vietnam and a supporter of the U.S. war against Islamic extremism in Iraq. He has been both a foreign correspondent in some of the world's most dangerous places and a legendary bon vivant with an unquenchable thirst for alcohol and literature. He is a fervent atheist, raised as a Christian, by a mother whose Jewish heritage was not revealed to him until her suicide. In other words, Christopher Hitchens contains multitudes. He sees all sides of an argument. And he believes the personal is political. This is the story of his life, a life lived large.

Intellectual juggernaut and staunch atheist Christopher Hitchens goes head-to-head with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, one of the Western world most openly devout political leaders, on the highly charged topic of religion. Few world leaders have had a greater hand in shaping current events than Blair; few writers have been more outspoken and polarizing than Hitchens. Here they square off on the contentious questions that continue to dog the topic of religion in our globalized world. How does faith influence our actions? What is the role of people of faith in the public sphere? Is religious doctrine rigid, or should we allow for flexibility in our interpretations? First debated in 2010 and now available in print form for the first time, the book includes candid interviews post-debate interviews with Hitchens and Blair. Sharp, provocative, and thoroughly engrossing, Hitchens vs. Blair is a rigorous and electrifying intellectual sparring match. Two formidable minds. One powerfully charged debate.

Journalist Christopher Hitchens examines events leading up to the partition of Cyprus and its legacy. He argues that the intervention of four major foreign powers Turkey, Greece, Britain, and the United States turned a local dispute into a major disaster. In a new Afterword, Hitchens reviews the implications of Cyprus's applications for European Union membership and more. 224 pp.

From bestselling author and provocateur Christopher Hitchens, the classic guide to the art of principled dissent and disagreement In Letters to a Young Contrarian, bestselling author and world-class provocateur Christopher Hitchens inspires the radicals, gadflies, mavericks, rebels, and angry young (wo)men of tomorrow. Exploring the entire range of "contrary positions"—from noble dissident to gratuitous nag—Hitchens introduces the next generation to the minds and the misfits who influenced him, invoking such mentors as Emile Zola, Rosa Parks, and George Orwell. As is his trademark, Hitchens pointedly pitches himself in contrast to stagnant attitudes across the ideological spectrum. No other writer has matched Hitchens's understanding of the importance of disagreement—to personal integrity, to informed discussion, to true progress, to democracy itself.

"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.

On June 8, 2010, while on a book tour for his bestselling memoir, Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens was stricken in his New York hotel room with excruciating pain in his chest and thorax. As he would later write in the first of a series of award-winning columns for "Vanity Fair," he suddenly found himself being deported "from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady." Over the next eighteen months, until his death in Houston on December 15, 2011, he wrote constantly and brilliantly on politics and culture, astonishing readers with his capacity for superior work even in extremis. Throughout the course of his ordeal battling esophageal cancer, Hitchens adamantly and bravely refused the solace of religion, preferring to confront death with both eyes open. In this account of his affliction, he describes the torments of illness, discusses its taboos, and explores how disease transforms experience and changes our relationship to the world around us. By turns personal and philosophical, Hitchens embraces the full panoply of human emotions as cancer invades his body and compels him to grapple with the enigma of mortality.

In No One Left to Lie To, Christopher Hitchens portrays President Bill Clinton as one of the most ideologically skewed and morally negligent politicians of recent times. In a blistering polemic which shows that Clinton was at once philanderer and philistine, crooked and corrupt, Hitchens challenges perceptions - of liberals and conservatives alike - of this highly divisive figure. With blistering wit and meticulous documentation, Hitchens masterfully deconstructs Clinton's abject propensity for pandering to the Left while delivering to the Right and argues that the president's personal transgressions were inseparable from his political corruption.

Hitchens has written a great deal of bracing good sense on politics & literature in the past decades. Much of it has been collected between the covers of this well-packed book. Since these pieces originally appeared in journals as wide-ranging as the TLS, Grand Street, Harper's, Mother Jones, The Nation & Spectator, only the most avid admirer would be likely to have come across them all. In addition to the predictable, eloquent Reagan-bashing, there are thoughtful essays on Paul Scott & his Raj Quartet, the contradictions of George Orwell, the Brideshead phenomenon, that very independent-minded Israeli Professor Israel Shahak, Conor Cruise O'Brien, even something as up-to-date as a perceptive review of Bonfire of the Vanities. Hitchens writes clearly, from a well-stocked mind, & is free of the cant that affects many political journalists. Why the kinds of views that he & his very kindred spirit Alexander Cockburn express so well never receive an airing on TV, where they'd reach a much wider audience, remains a source of shame to a supposedly free medium. In any case, book & magazine readers can feel fortunate that publishers suffer no such self-imposed restraints. -- Publishers Weekly

In 2007, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett filmed a conversation on religion, ethics, and the new atheism. The documentary went viral. Now, in print for the first time, this edition features new essays by Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett and an introduction by Stephen Fry. At the dawn of the new atheist movement, the thinkers who became known as "the four horsemen," the heralds of religion's unravelling—Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett—sat down over cocktails for a filmed conversation. What followed was this rigorous, pathbreaking, and enthralling conversation that was released on YouTube and soon went viral. This is intellectual inquiry at its sincere and probing, funny and unpredictable, reminding us just how varied and colorful the threads of modern atheism are. Now, this landmark conversation is being published for the first time. The living participants, Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett, have all contributed new material to mark the evolution of their own thinking and highlight particularly resonant aspects of this epic exchange. Each of these men contends with the most fundamental questions of human existence as they challenge each other to articulate their own stance on god and religion, cultural criticism, spirituality without religion, debate with people of faith, and living an ethical life.

Among his many books, perhaps none have sparked more outrage than The Missionary Position, Christopher Hitchens's meticulous study of the life and deeds of Mother Teresa. A Nobel Peace Prize recipient beatified by the Catholic Church in 2003, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was celebrated by heads of state and adored by millions for her work on behalf of the poor. In his measured critique, Hitchens asks only that Mother Teresa's reputation be judged by her actions-not the other way around. With characteristic elan and rhetorical dexterity, Hitchens eviscerates the fawning cult of Teresa, recasting the Albanian missionary as a spurious, despotic, and megalomaniacal operative of the wealthy who long opposed measures to end poverty, and fraternized, for financial gain, with tyrants and white-collar criminals throughout the world.

'Why, when the subject of royalty or monarchy is mentioned, do the British bid adieu to every vestige of proportion, modesty, humour and restraint? ' This is not a call for the monarchy’s abolition by fiat; illusions cannot be abolished. This is an invitation to think. In this scathing essay, Christopher Hitchens looks at the relationship of the press and the public to the royal family, unpacking the tautology and contradictory arguments that prop it up. In his inimitable style, Hitchens argues that our desire not to profane or disturb the monarchy is a failure of reason and a confusion of reality. Fealty to the magic of monarchy stops us looking objectively at our own history and hinders open-minded criticism of our present. It is time we outgrew it. With the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee upon us, during a time of recession, high unemployment and national debt, Hitchens’ 10,000-word critique is even more relevant today than when it was first published in 1990. Part of the Brain Shots series, the pre-eminent source for high quality, short-form digital non-fiction. 'Christopher is one of the most terrifying rhetoricians that the world has yet seen.' Martin Amis

The most powerful case yet made for the return of the Parthenon Marbles The Parthenon Marbles (formerly known as the Elgin Marbles), designed and executed by Pheidias to adorn the Parthenon, are perhaps the greatest of all classical sculptures. In 1801, Lord Elgin, then ambassador to the Turkish government, had chunks of the frieze sawn off and shipped to England, where they were subsequently seized by Parliament and sold to the British Museum to help pay off his debts. This scandal, exacerbated by the inept handling of the sculptures by their self-appointed guardians, remains unresolved to this day. In his fierce, eloquent account of a shameful piece of British imperial history, Christopher Hitchens makes the moral, artistic, legal and political case for re-unifying the Parthenon frieze in Athens. The opening of the New Acropolis Museum emphatically trumps the British Museum’s long-standing (if always questionable) objection that there is nowhere in Athens to house the Parthenon Marbles. With contributions by Nadine Gordimer and Professor Charalambos Bouras, The Parthenon Marbles will surely end all arguments about where these great treasures belong, and help bring a two-centuries-old disgrace to a just conclusion.

«Οι οπαδοί των νεράιδων δεν χτυπάνε την πόρτα σου για να σε προσηλυτίσουν. Δεν απαιτούν να διδάσκεται η ψευτοεπιστήμη τους στα σχολεία. Δεν καταδικάζουν σε θάνατο οπαδούς άλλων νεράιδων. Δεν ισχυρίζονται ότι οι ηθικοί κανόνες βγαίνουν από τις τελετές των νεράιδων και ότι χωρίς νεράιδες θα είχαμε συνουσίες στους δρόμους και την κατάργηση της ατομικής ιδιοκτησίας. Δεν λένε ότι οι νεράιδες έφτιαξαν τον κόσμο και ως εκ τούτου πρέπει να κλείνουμε το γόνυ στον Μεγάλο Αδελφό των νεράιδων. Δεν λένε ότι η νεράιδα θα σε διατάξει να σκοτώσεις την αδελφή σου αν κυκλοφορεί στο δρόμο με κάποιον που δεν είναι ο αδελφός της. Νομίζω λοιπόν ότι ισχύει αυτό που ο ποιητής Σέλεϋ αποκαλούσε αναγκαιότητα του αθεϊσμού. Αργά ή γρήγορα θα πρέπει να πάρεις θέση. Είτε αποδίδεις την παρουσία σου εδώ στους νόμους της βιολογίας και της φυσικής είτε την αποδίδεις σε ένα θείο σχέδιο. (Μπορείς να διακρίνεις τον φίλο από τον εχθρό από το πώς απαντούν σε αυτό το αναπόδραστο ερώτημα και από το πώς αντιμετωπίζουν τις επιπτώσεις του.) Κι ωστόσο, όπως και οι πιστοί, άπαξ και αποφασίσουμε, έχουμε ακόμη πολλή δουλειά μπροστά μας.» Ο Κρίστοφερ Χίτσενς, που πέθανε τον Δεκέμβρη του 2011, μας οδηγεί μες από την αγνωστικιστική και αντιθρησκευτική σκέψη πολλών αιώνων. Ο τόμος περιλαμβάνει 45 κείμενα που συνιστούν τον κανόνα του αθεϊσμού. Από τον Λουκρήτιο στον Ντέιβιντ Χιουμ, από τον Τόμας Χομπς και τον Σπινόζα ως τον Σέλλεϋ και τον Καρλ Μαρξ, και από τον Δαρβίνο και τον Φρόυντ ως τους νεότερους και σύγχρονους μαχητικούς συνήγορους του αθεϊσμού, τον Ρίτσαρντ Ντώκινς, τον Ντάνιελ Ντένετ, τον Μάικλ Σέρμερ, τον Σαμ Χάρις, τον Ίαν Μακιούαν, και πολλούς άλλους. Τα διαφωτιστικά όσο και απολαυστικά κείμενα της ανθολογίας, εμπλουτισμένα με τα εξαιρετικά σχόλια του Κρίστοφερ Χίτσενς, ενδιαφέρουν όχι μόνο τον άθεο, τον αγνωστικιστή και τον πανθεϊστή, αλλά διεγείρουν την περιέργεια ακόμη και του μονοθεϊστή αναγνώστη.

Over the past few decades, the bestselling author of Hitch-22 has crisscrossed the globe debating religious scholars, Catholic clergy, rabbis, and devout Christians on the existence of God--appearances that have attracted thousands of people on both sides of the issue. He has been invited to talk shows and events to discuss everything from the death of Jerry Falwell to the sainthood of Mother Teresa, from U.S. policy in the Middle East to the dangers of religious fundamentalism and beyond. And he is always armed with pithy discourse that is as intelligent as it is quotable.The Quotable Hitchens gathers for the first time the eminent journalist, public intellectual, and all-around provocateur Christopher Hitchen's most scathing, inflammatory, hilarious, and clear-cut commentary from the course of his storied career. Drawn from his many TV appearances, debates, lectures, interviews, articles, and books, the quotations are arranged alphabetically by subject--from atheism and alcoholism to George Orwell and Bertrand Russell, from Islamofascism and Iraq to smoking and sex--and perfectly capture the wit and range of "intellectual willing to show his teeth in the case of righteousness."

"A balanced, readable portrait. A refreshing perspective.” — New York Times Book Review With intelligence, insight, eloquence, and wit, bestselling author Christopher Hitchens gives us an artful portrait of a complex, formative figure in American history and his turbulent era . In this unique biography of Thomas Jefferson, leading journalist and social critic Christopher Hitchens offers a startlingly new and provocative interpretation of our Founding Father—a man conflicted by power who wrote the Declaration of Independence and acted as ambassador to France yet yearned for a quieter career in the Virginia legislature. A masterly writer, Jefferson was an awkward public speaker. A professed proponent of emancipation, he elided the issue of slavery from the Declaration of Independence and continued to own human property. A reluctant candidate, he left an indelible presidential legacy.

Thomas Paine was one of the greatest advocates of freedom in history, and his Declaration of the Rights of Man, first published in 1791, is the key to his reputation. Inspired by his outrage at Edmund Burke’s attack on the French Revolution, Paine’s text is a passionate defense of man’s inalienable rights. Since its publication, Rights of Man has been celebrated, criticized, maligned, suppressed, and co-opted. But in Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, the polemicist and commentator Christopher Hitchens, “at his characteristically incisive best,” marvels at its forethought and revels in its contentiousness (The Times, London). Hitchens is a political descendant of the great pamphleteer, “a Tom Paine for our troubled times.” (The Independent, London) In this “engaging account of Paine’s life and times [that is] well worth reading” he demonstrates how Paine’s book forms the philosophical cornerstone of the United States, and how, “in a time when both rights and reason are under attack,” Thomas Paine’s life and writing “will always be part of the arsenal on which we shall need to depend.” (New Statesman)

A celebration of Percy Shelley’s assertion that ‘poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world’, these thirty-plus essays on writers from Oscar Wilde to Salman Rushdie dispel the myth of politics as a stone tied to the neck of literature; Norman Podhoretz’s ‘bloody crossroads’. Instead Hitchens argues that when all parties in the state were agreed on a matter, it was the individual pens that created the space for a true moral argument.

In this widely acclaimed biographical essay, Christopher Hitchens assesses the life, the achievements, and the myth of the great political writer and participant George Orwell. In true emulative and contrarian style, Hitchens is both admiring and aggressive, sympathetic yet critical, taking true measure of his subject as hero and problem. Answering both the detractors and the false claimants, Hitchens tears down the façade of sainthood erected by the hagiographers and rebuts the critics point by point. He examines Orwell and his perspectives on fascism, empire, feminism, and Englishness, as well as his outlook on America, a country and culture towards which he exhibited much ambivalence. Whether thinking about empires or dictators, race or class, nationalism or popular culture, Orwell's moral outlook remains indispensable in a world that has undergone vast changes in the fifty years since his death. Combining the best of Hitchens's polemical punch and intellectual elegance in a tightly woven and subtle argument, this book addresses not only why Orwell matters today, but how he will continue to matter in a future, uncertain world. Christopher Hitchens, one of the most incisive minds of our own age, meets Orwell on the page in this provocative encounter of wit, contention and moral truth.

This groundbreaking collection of unpublished speeches by the late Christopher Hitchens—author of the #1 New York Times bestseller god is not Great —offers sharp rebukes to tyrants and the ill-informed everywhere. Christopher Hitchens was arguably the most erudite, provocative, and polarizing writers of the last twenty-five years. When he passed away in 2011 from esophageal cancer, writers, readers, pundits and critics the world over mourned his loss. Hitchens had a gift for lifting his audiences, both on the page and in lecture halls, by the passion of his voice, the moral urgency of his attacks, the bite and complexity of his wit, and the swagger and seeming spontaneity of his lyrical soliloquies. His now-legendary public lectures and debates cemented his status as the kind of literary phenomenon who comes along but once in a generation. No matter the subject, Hitchens’s arguments each ultimately pointed to the same freedom from tyranny in any and all forms. Why Religion Is Immoral brings together the most memorable of the arguments he made over the last two decades, the case against God, faith and religious observance; the case for intervention in Iraq; jabs at towering political figures like Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger; as well as celebrations of the pleasures of drinking, and of the writers whose lives and work most influenced his own, such as George Orwell, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine, among others.