Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays

Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
Author(s)	Christopher Hitchens
Country	United States of America
Language	English
Publisher	Nation Books
Publication date	2004
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	475
ISBN	1-56025-580-3
OCLC Number	56991027
Dewey Decimal	306.2 22
LC Classification	JA75.7 .H58 2004

Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays is a collection of essays and reportage by author, journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens. The title of the book is explained in the introduction, which informs the reader that "an antique saying has it that a man's life is incomplete unless or until he has tasted love, poverty, and war."

The "Love" section includes essays on some of Hitchens's favourite literary figures: Evelyn Waugh, James Joyce, Leon Trotsky and Rudyard Kipling; "Poverty" includes critiques of the likes of Mother Teresa, Michael Moore, Mel Gibson and David Irving; while "War" is divided into writings "Before September" and "After September." showing Hitchens' reaction to the Terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. As Colm Tóibín observes in his review, "the book is overshadowed by that day and by Hitchens's response to it." It was, in Hitchens's words, "a condensed day of love, poverty, and war, all right."

The first section includes reports from North Korea, Cuba and a long piece on the Kurdish people and diaspora written for National Geographic in 1992. The second section features all Hitchens' post 9/11 writing in chronological order, and so chronicles his fallout with much of the left on that and related matters, in addition to his critique of Islamofascism and his support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

External links

• Goodreads page.