num_pages: 365
description: Hitchens has written a great deal of bracing good sense on politics &amp; 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 &amp; 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 &amp; 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, &amp; is free of the cant that affects many political journalists. Why the kinds of views that he &amp; 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 &amp; magazine readers can feel fortunate that publishers suffer no such self-imposed restraints. -- Publishers Weekly
language: English
title: Prepared for the Worst: Selected Essays and Minority Reports
titlecomplete: Prepared for the Worst: Selected Essays and Minority Reports
characters: Oliver Cromwell, Richard Howe, 1st Earl Howe, H.L. Mencken, Joseph Stalin, Oliver North, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Seymour Hersh, I.F. Stone, Israel Shahak, Mao Zedong, Eugene McCarthy, Norman Podhoretz, Al Gore, Dan Rather, Enrique Bermúdez, Noam Chomsky, William Pitt the Younger, John Kerry, Adolf Hitler, Alfred Dreyfus, Thomas E. Dewey, Irving Kristol, Harry S. Truman, Miloš Forman, Earl Browder, William J. Casey, Helen Suzman, Pieter Willem Botha, Salvador Allende, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sylvester Stallone, Walter Mondale, John Wayne, Theodore Roosevelt, Martin Bucer, Henry Kissinger, Ian Smith, John Milton, Alexander Hamilton, Eve, Hubert Humphrey, George H.W. Bush, Oscar Wilde, Ariel Sharon, Jorge Luis Borges, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Josephus, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Carl Clinton Van Doren, Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu, Eugene V. Debs, Pericles, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Salman Rushdie, Gerald Ford, William F. Buckley, Jr., Hendrik Hertzberg, Menachem Begin, Ferdinand Marcos, George McGovern, Christopher Hitchens, Edmund Burke, Meir Kahane, Jane Mayer, Edward Said, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Lucifer, Louis XVI of France, Mark Twain, Ronald Reagan, Nadine Gordimer, T.S. Eliot, Cassandra (divers), Abu Nidal, Pat Buchanan, Evelyn Waugh, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Paul Mark Scott, Edwin Meese, E.P. Thompson, Martin Luther, Newt Gingrich, Jesse Jackson, Augusto Pinochet, William Butler Yeats, John Dos Passos, John Bunyan, William Blake, Adam Harcourt, Jerry Falwell Sr., Michael Harrington, Leon Trotsky, Louis Farrakhan, Henry Ford, Baruch Spinoza, Lyndon B. Johnson, George Orwell, Thomas Paine
genres: Essays, Politics, Religion, Philosophy, United States, Atheism, Zimbabwe, Nonfiction, History, Journalism
ratings_count: 209
places: Saigon, New Orleans, Louisiana, Hollywood, California, Kimberley, Northern Cape, Damascus, Dallas, Texas, Louisiana, California, Moscow, Manhattan, New York City, New York, Baghdad, Massachusetts, West Bank, Middle East, Lebanon, Pretoria, Manila, Ho Chi Minh City, Potsdam, Houston, Texas, Johannesburg, Vietnam, Detroit, Michigan, Boston, Massachusetts, Syria, Beirut, Washington, D.C., Texas
publisher: Hill & Wang Publ. (NY)