letters to a young contrarian

Cambridge, MA: Basic Books, 2001. Second printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Format is approximately 5.25 inches by 7 8.25 inches. xii, [2], 141, [3] pages. Signed by the author on the title page. Previous owner's information in ink on fep. Autographed copy sticker on front of DJ. Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 - 15 December 2011) was an English-American intellectual, polemicist, and socio-political critic who expressed himself as an author, orator, essayist, journalist, and columnist. Hitchens was the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of over 30 books, including five collections of essays on culture, politics, and literature. A staple of public discourse, his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded public intellectual and a controversial public figure. He contributed to New Statesman, The Nation, The Weekly Standard, The Atlantic, London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Slate, Free Inquiry, The Spectator, and Vanity Fair. As an anti-theist, he regarded all religions as false, harmful, and authoritarian. He argued in favor of free expression and scientific discovery, and asserted that it was superior to religion as an ethical code of conduct for human civilization. He also advocated for separation of church and state. The dictum, "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence", has become known as Hitchens's razor. In 1991, he received a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction. In 2007, Hitchens's work for Vanity Fair won the National Magazine Award in the category "Columns and Commentary". In 2009, Hitchens was listed by Forbes magazine as one of the '25 most influential liberals in the U.S. media'. Letters to a Young Contrarian is Christopher Hitchens' contribution to the Art of Mentoring series published by Basic Books. Inspired by his students at The New School in New York City and "a challenge that was made to me in the early months of the year 2000," the book is addressed directly to the reader-"My Dear X" -as a series of missives exploring a range of "contrarian," radical, independent or "dissident" positions, and advocating the attitudes best suited to cultivating and to holding them. Hitchens touches on his own ideological development, the nature of debate and humor, the ways in which language is slyly manipulated in apology for offensive and ridiculous positions, and how to see through this and recognize it whenever it arises in oneself. Throughout Hitchens makes reference to those dissenters who have inspired him over the years, including �mile Zola, Rosa Parks, George Orwell, Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke, and V�clav Havel. The book also contains some of the critiques of religion and religious belief which Hitchens would later develop in his book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. In Letters to a Young Contrarian, best-selling 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.