Hitch-22

The book was released in May 2010 by Atlantic Books in the United Kingdom and June 2011 by Twelve, an imprint of Hachette Book Group USA, and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. The author's planned international book tour was cut short later that month during the American portion so that she could undergo treatment for newly discovered esophageal cancer.

This lively biography follows the lives and times of this much-missed public intellectual from his youth in Portsmouth, England, where his father was a navy man, through boarding school, Oxford, and his later career as a writer in both England and the United States. Christopher Hitchens was a political leftist who was unexpected (and at times incomprehensible). "Hitch-22" reveals how seriously he treated the things that truly mattered to him: social justice, learning, direct language, mental freedom, loyalty, and holding public personalities to high standards.

This is a vibrant book about friendships, and it will make you want to take your own more seriously. Hitchens recounts moments with friends that include Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and the poet James Fenton. There is a lot of wits here, and bawdy wordplay and accounts of long nights spent drinking and smoking. Hitchens decided to become a student of history and politics, he writes, after the Cuban missile crisis.

Detailed information:

Author: Christopher Hitchens
Language: English

Genre: Memoir
Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7332753