And Yet...

Essays

By: Christopher Hitchens

Narrated by: Steve West

The seminal, uncollected essays—lauded as “dazzling” (The New York Times Book Review)—by the late Christopher Hitchens, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller God Is Not Great, showcase the notorious contrarian’s genius for rhetoric and his sharp rebukes to tyrants and the ill-informed everywhere.

For more than forty years, Christopher Hitchens delivered essays to numerous publications on both sides of the Atlantic that were astonishingly wide-ranging and provocative. His death in December 2011 from esophageal cancer prematurely silenced a voice that was among the most admired of contemporary voices—writers, readers, pundits and critics the world over mourned his loss.

At the time of his death, Hitchens left nearly 250,000 words of essays not yet published in book form. “Another great book of essays from a writer who we wish were still alive to produce more copy” (National Review), And Yet… ranges from the literary to the political and is a banquet of entertaining and instructive delights, including essays on Orwell, Lermontov, Chesterton, Fleming, Naipaul, Rushdie, Orhan Pamuk, and Dickens, among others, as well as his laugh-out-loud self-mocking “makeover.” The range and quality of Hitchens’s essays transcend the particular occasions for which they were originally written, yielding “a bounty of famous scalps, thunder-blasted targets, and a few love letters from the notorious provocateur-in-chief’s erudite and scathing assessments of American culture” (Vanity Fair). Often prescient, always pugnacious, formidably learned, Hitchens was a polemicist for the ages. With this posthumous volume, he remains, “America’s foremost rhetorical pugilist” (The Village Voice).

In Contrast. . .

Not long ago, I wrote a lengthy glowing review of ARGUABLY, probably my favorite collection of essays of all time, certainly by anyone in the past half century. What a brilliant mind.

In contrast, the essays in "and yet..." are the Hitchens essays and articles not chosen for "Arguably." For good reason. These are either not as sharp and witty or cover subjects that aren't as intriguing.

If you're a fan of Hitchens however, I recommend you get these. I enjoyed most of them immensely, despite my disagreement with his views on religion. After all, Christopher Hitchens, not at his sharpest or wittiest, is better than the best of the muckrakers still living.

By the way, I could hear the voice of Hitchens in Simon Prebble's narration in "Arguably." Mr. West, the narrator here, unfortunately has the spirit of a saccharine shadow.

National treasure

What a mind! What an ego! What a prism! I got a an IQ bump from listening.

Really enjoyable solo inform them a brilliant mind

I always enjoy listening to Christopher Hitchens I find him to be absolutely illuminating on so many different subjects he always surprises me very sorry he is gone.

A woinderful collection of Hitchen's articles

Christopher Hitchens was the best English language essayist of the past 50 years. This book is a gem, a collection of his articles for various publications. Some, like his Self-Improvement or Christmas articles, are downright hilarious. Others, like his disapproval of Hilary Clinton in early 2008 or his defense of the dethroning of Saddam Hussein are thoughtful and insightful even years after their authorship. By the way, although his views of Hussein are very much in the minority, he comes from the perspective of the Kurds, whom he visited and observed Iraqi government sanctioned torture and oppression. They have greatly benefited from Hussein's death. Mr. Hitchens is at his best with literary criticism. His views of Nabokov, Orwell, Vidal, his friend Martin Amis, among others, are brilliant. This is as good as it gets and one hopes there is more out there.

great look on our past!

I love to hear other people's out look on our past, This is so we'll written and we'll told!!