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 1990s to 2004, 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.--From publisher description.

Essays.

The medals of his defeats -- A man of permanent contradictions -- The old man -- Huxley and Brave New World -- Greeneland -- Scoop -- The man of feeling -- The misfortune of poetry -- The acutest ear in Paris -- Joyce in bloom -- The immortal -- It happened on Sunset -- The ballad of Route 66 -- The adventures of Augie March -- Rebel ghosts -- America's poet? : Bob Dylan's achievement -- I fought the law in Bloomberg's New York -- For Patriot dreams -- Martha Inc. -- Scenes from an execution -- In sickness and by stealth -- The strange case of David Irving -- Why Americans are not taught history -- A hundred years of muggery -- Unfairenheit 9/11 : the lies of Michael Moore -- Virginity regained -- The divine one -- The devil and Mother Teresa -- Blessed are the phrasemakers -- Jewish powers, Jewish peril -- The future of an illusion -- The gospel according to Mel -- The struggle of the Kurds -- Thunder in the Black Mountains -- Visit to a small planet -- Havana can wait -- The Clinton-Douglas debates -- We're still standing -- The morning after -- Against rationalization -- Of sin, the Left, & Islamic fascism -- A rejoinder to Noam Chomsky -- Blaming Bin Laden first -- The ends of war -- Pakistan : on the frontier of apocalypse -- Saddam's long good-bye -- A liberating experience.