Christopher Hitchens read very, very widely. As Richard Dawkins said: “You seem to have read absolutely everything. I can’t think of anybody since Aldous Huxley who’s so well read.”

Below is a list of authors and / or books he recommended / spoke well of.

Tips to expand this list are very welcome.

This list will be updated with references from Hitchens’ other books.

Last update: 04-04-2022, thanks to Dimitris Mavridopoulos I added some mentions by Hitchens in Reflections on Antisemitism and The Eton empire.

06-01-2019, thanks to Dimitris Mavridopoulos I added some books / authors Hitchens mentions in Unacknowledged Legislation.

Author / bookTypeReference___________________Quote_______________________________
American Declaration of IndependenceHistory / PoliticsHitch-22, p. 252"There are very few worthwhile documents in human history that are or were the product of a committee. I suppose that the King James or “Authorized” Version of the Bible is the best. Next to that—and of course very much shorter and rather less monarchical and tyrannical—the American Declaration of Independence and the preamble to the United States Constitution seem to me to rank exceedingly high."
Amis, Kingsley: Girl, 20LiteratureHitch-22, p. 132"(...) Kingsley Amis's neglected masterpiece novel (...)"
Amis, Kingsley: Lucky JimLiteratureLove, poverty, and war,
p. 87
Amis, Martin: Money LiteratureHitch-22, p. 167“I (…) was eventually joined by a rather reduced and chastened Martin. If you want to know what happened to him, the whole experience enriched and enhanced by what I confessed to him of what had happened to me, you must read Money, where John Self tries to get laid for pay “under the bam, under the boo,” at a perfectly foul establishment named “The Happy Isles.” There are many, many reasons why Money is the Great English Novel of the 1980s, to which I am able to add this ensuing insight. Out of our grim little encounter (where he, poor bastard, actually had to part with the cash and endure a sexual fiasco) came several paragraphs of pure reality-based fantasy that make me twist and snarl with laughter every time.”
Anderson, PerryHistory"What’s Left?" A review of Anderson's Spectrum: From right to left in the world of ideas." (...) he must be accounted the most polymathic, and at the same time the most profound, essayist currently wielding a pen. His handling of the relationship between history and philosophy, and historians and philosophers, would—if the word did not possess a connotation of the meretricious—deserve to be called “dazzling.”"
Auden, W.H.PoetryThe last interview, p. 64"I'd love to have met him."
Auden, W.H.PoetryHitch-22, p. 334The Proust Questionnaire:
"Who are your favorite poets?"

"Philip Larkin, Robert Conquest, W.H. Auden, James Fenton, W.B. Yeats, Chidiock Tichbourne, G.K. Chesterton, Wendy Cope."
Avrich, Paul: Anarchist PortraitsHistoryFor the sake of argument,
p. 222
"(...) charming and melancholy album of silhouettes (...)"
Barker, Pat: Regeneration trilogyLiteratureUnacknowledged legislation, Foreword."(...) the magnificent Regeneration trilogy composed by Pat Barker (...)."
Bellow, Saul: The Adventures of Augie MarchLiteratureUnacknowledged legislation, p. 130, 260"(...) Bellow’s uncanny facility for encapsulating an atmosphere (...)." / "(...) Bellow’s most superbly rendered fictional creation (...)"
Bennett, Alan: An Englishman AbroadPlayThe EtThe Eton empireon empire"Alan Bennett’s astonishing play An Englishman Abroad)"
Borges, Jorge LuisLiteratureThe last interview, p. 76. / Love, poverty, and war, p. 131
Borges, Jorge LuisLiteratureHitch-22, p. 198"(...) my hero (...)"
Buhle, Paul: C.L.R. James: The artist as RevolutionaryHistory / PoliticsFor the sake of argument,
p. 326
"(...) Paul Buhle's admirable book C.L.R. James: The artist as Revolutionary (...)
Byron: CainLiteratureLove, poverty, and war,
p. 106
"And his post-Miltonice epic poem Cain, which is actually a very moving and despairing assault on biblical literalism and servile human credulity (...)"
Chesterton, G.K.LiteratureHitch-22, p. 334The Proust Questionnaire:
"Who are your favorite poets?"

"Philip Larkin, Robert Conquest, W.H. Auden, James Fenton, W.B. Yeats, Chidiock Tichbourne, G.K. Chesterton, Wendy Cope."
Chomsky, NoamPoliticsHitch-22, p. 416"I possess several inscribed books from him (...) If you look back at the essays that made his name—on the incipient stages of the Vietnam War, on B.F. Skinner, on the memoirs of Kissinger, on East Timor, and on the Kahane Commission on the Sabra/Shatila massacres—you will find a polemical talent well worth mourning, and a feeling for justice that ought not to have gone rancid and resentful."
Chomsky, Noam: The Culture of TerrorismPolitics / PhilosphyFor the sake of argument,
p. 216
"Noam Chomsky's latest book has many merits, but I think its formost virtue is the way in which it exposes this linguistic and ideological fraud [the 'WE' fallacy - TT]. Chomsky writes ruthlessly and forensically about the operations of empire, and about the cast of mind which underpins empire while simultaneously denying its existence."
Clark, Alan: The DonkeysHistory / PoliticsFor the sake of argument,
p. 184
"(...) a rugged study of British Great War generalship (...)"
Cockburn, PatrickHistoryHitch-22, p. 317"(...) my old friend Patrick Cockburn, perhaps the best chronicler of the [Iraqi - TT] war and certainly its most fervent and intelligent critic."
Connolly, Cyril: Eton, Enemies of Promise.The EtThe Eton empireon empire"The agony and ecstasy are both beautifully caught in Cyril Connolly’s timeless book about Eton, Enemies of Promise."
Conquest, RobertHistory / PoetryHitch-22, p. 334The Proust Questionnaire:
"Who are your favorite poets?"

"Philip Larkin, Robert Conquest, W.H. Auden, James Fenton, W.B. Yeats, Chidiock Tichbourne, G.K. Chesterton, Wendy Cope."
Conquest, RobertPoliticsMy Week"My favourite nineteen-seventeener, though, is Robert Conquest. Author of The Great Terror, which predated Solzhenitsyn by some years in providing a morbid anatomy of Stalinism, Bob is probably the single most devastating defector the British Communist party ever boasted as a member."

& "If Conquest was purely a political animal, he'd still be world famous, but he's also the last man standing of that literary-poetic postwar group, which included Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin and John Wain, and was rather tritely baptised as "the Movement"."
Constitution of the Unites StatesHistory / PoliticsHitch-22, p. 252“I (…) decided to read slowly through the Constitution. (…) I just felt like re-reading it. There are very few worthwhile documents in human history that are or were the product of a committee. I suppose that the King James or “Authorized” Version of the Bible is the best. Next to that—and of course very much shorter and rather less monarchical and tyrannical—the American Declaration of Independence and the preamble to the United States Constitution seem to me to rank exceedingly high. I sipped my wine and let the small hours advance as I read, and consulted the supporting case law from the great attendant volume of Professors Lockhart, Kamisar, and Choper. To study the amendments—the Bill of Rights and its successor clauses—is to read the history of the United States in miniature. Here were all the measures that set out to distinguish the new United States from the arbitrary and corrupt practices of the Hanoverian usurpers: amendments abolishing the established church, postulating an armed people, opposing the billeting of soldiers upon civilians, limiting searches of property and persons and in general setting limits and boundaries to state power. One had to admire the unambivalent way in which these were written.”
Cope, WendyPoetryHitch-22, p. 334The Proust Questionnaire:
"Who are your favorite poets?"

"Philip Larkin, Robert Conquest, W.H. Auden, James Fenton, W.B. Yeats, Chidiock Tichbourne, G.K. Chesterton, Wendy Cope."
Dangerfield, George: Strange Death of Liberal EnglandHistoryFor the sake of argument,
p. 215
"The two greatest freehand exercises in English periodization, G.M. Young's Portrait of an Age and George Dangerfield's Strange Death of Liberal England. (...)"
Davis, Mike Ecology of FearEcology / HistoryMy Week"To mark the millennium, Mike Davis, the unofficial biographer of Los Angeles, published a book called Ecology of Fear. Its depiction of a coming environmental and societal apocalypse was so graphic that many critics described it as alarmist, hyperbolic and a leftist equivalent of Blade Runner. (Actually, one of the book's merits is its summary of the numerous filmic and fictional dystopias that have had LA as their setting.)"
Dickens, CharlesLiterature"The Dark Side of Dickens." A review of Charles Dickens by Michael Slate"(...) Charles Dickens was among the best of writers (...)."
Durrell, Lawrence: Bitter LemonsFictionHOSTAGE TO HISTORY: CYPRUS FROM THE OTTOMANS TO KISSINGER – INTRODUCTION – BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS"n Cyprus, this duality was expressed most vividly by Lawrence Durrell in his beautiful but patronizing memoir Bitter Lemons."
Eliot, GeorgeLiteratureThe last interview, p. 76"I read George Eliot a lot, whenever I can."
Fenton, JamesLiteratureHitch-22, p. 334The Proust Questionnaire:
"Who are your favorite poets?"

"Philip Larkin, Robert Conquest, W.H. Auden, James Fenton, W.B. Yeats, Chidiock Tichbourne, G.K. Chesterton, Wendy Cope."
Fenton, JamesPoetryHitch-22, p. 421"My beloved friend James Fenton (...) The closing words of one of his most exquisite poems from that period were: “I’m afraid that all my friends are dead.” But he knew that if there were any survivors they would know how to contact him, and when some of them did, and being the conscience-determined person he was and is, he went straight back to the frontiers and the camps to see how he could be of help. The resulting poems—collected as Children in Exile—comprise an essential complement to their predecessors in Memory of War. One of the latter is titled “Prison Island.” I happen to remember the genesis of this outwardly melancholy but diamond-hard poem particularly well: we had both just been verbally and aurally assailed by a braggart dogmatist who asserted of his own sect: “The possibility of defeat does not enter our calculations.”
Fenton, JamesPoetryHitch-22, p. 154"James Fenton (the author of the most beautiful poems to come out of the Indochina War)."
Fischer, Ernst: An Opposing ManHistoryFor the sake of argument,
p. 136
"(...) his marvellous book An Opposing Man (...)"
Fitzgerald, Scott: The great GatsbyLiteratureUnacknowledged legislation, ?"Having decided with The Great Gatsby to chisel out nine short and finely wrought chapters that would demand everything he had, Fitzgerald found he’d taken on all the great American themes, from the original ‘dream’ itself to the corresponding loss of innocence."
god: The BibleLiteratureHitch-22, p. 252"There are very few worthwhile documents in human history that are or were the product of a committee. I suppose that the King James or “Authorized” Version of the Bible is the best."
Greene, GrahamLiteratureLove, poverty, and war,
p. 69
Hawking, StephenPhysicsArguably, p. 145"(...) that was before Carl Sagan and Lawrence Krauss and Steven Weinberg and Stephen Hawking fused language and science (and humor) and clambered up to stand, as Newton himself phrased it, 'on the shoulders of giants.'"
his brilliant book Carr, E.H.: What Is History?HistoryHitch-22, p. 323"(...) his brilliant book What Is History? (...)."
Hobsbawn, EricHistory"Russian communism took power in 1917, which was also quite a good year for laying down your vintage intellectuals. Born in that year were Eric Hobsbawm, who can still be counted a Marxist or at least Marx-ish historian (...)"
Hofstadter, Richard: The Paranoid Style in American PoliticsPoliticsFor the sake of argument,
p. 7
"(...) his endlessly consultable study The Paranoid Style in American Politics."
Hughes, Robert: Things I didn't know.MemoirUnsentimental Education. A new memoir by Robert Hughes reveals the idiosyncratic sensibility of a celebrated art critic.
Huxley, Aldous: Brave New WorldLiteratureLove, poverty, and war,
p. 56
Isaacson, Walter: KissingerHistory / PoliticsFor the sake of argument,
p. 247
"Walter Isaacson is one of the best magazine journalists in America, but he moves in a world where the worst that is often said of some near-genocidal policy is that it sends out the wrong 'signal'. He accordingly approaches the problem of evil with some circumspection. At one point he correctly characterizes the Nixon regime as 'pathological,' and he gives us a breathtaking passage in which Nixon conspires to have Kissinger put under the care of a psychiatrist - surely the great modern instance of what pop shrinks call 'projection'."
James, C.L.R.History / PoliticsFor the sake of argument,
p. 326
"(...) his historical masterpiece (...)"
James, C.L.R.HistoryHitch-22, p. 90“(…) of the moral titans of twentieth-century dissent. (…) Beyond a Boundary elucidates this recondite sport (cricket - TT) for the uninitiated and also suggests that in several ways it is not really a “sport” at all, but more of a classical art form that prepares young men for social grace as well as for chivalric heroism. James—whose early short stories, collected as Minty Alley, were plainly influential on the early writings of V.S. Naipaul—managed to do without Naipaul’s combination of rancor and racial/ethnic resentment. He was an internationalist to his core. His monumental work is Black Jacobins, a history of Toussaint L’Ouverture and the slave insurrection in Haiti. (…) James’s book—exactly the sort of history that was left out of the school and university syllabus—had a lasting effect on me. So did its author (…).”
James, C.L.R.: Beyond a BoundaryLiteratureArguably, p. 351"Dhondy barely exaggerates when he says that this book is for cricket what Death in the Afternoon is for bullfighting."
Joyce, JamesLiteratureThe last interview, p. 76. / Love, poverty, and war, p. 123
Kavan, Rosemary: Love and FreedomLiteratureFor the sake of argument,
p. 125
Jan Kavan is the son of a Czechoslovak man and an English woman whose family travail during facism, war, resistance, the Stalin show trials and the 'premature ant-Brezhnevite' period of the Dubcek movement is excellently set down by his mother, Rosemary Kavan, in her memoir Love and Freedom."
Kelly, Michael: Martyrs' DayHistoryLove, poverty, and war,
p. 458
"(...) his book about the first Gulf War. Mike would be killed on April 3. He has a monument in the hearts of many friends, Iraqi and American, but this book is his best memorial."
Kimball, Penn: The FileHistoryHitch-22, p. 219"(...) Penn was to discover that he and his wife had been under almost permanent police surveillance since the onset of the Cold War, and that this explained many denials of many employment opportunities: his ensuing book The File is a well-controlled masterpiece of frigid outrage at America’s betrayal of a loyal citizen."
Kipling, Rudyard: KimLiteratureLove, poverty, and war,
p. 40
"(...) I picked up Kim and re-read it in one session, marveling again at how fine it is."
Klemperer, Victor: DiariesLiterature / PoliticsArguably, p. 653"There is a horrid fascination in reading this day-by-day chronicle as it unfolds, along with each cuff on the head and gob of spittle, because we know what's coming, and he is only beginning to guess."
Koestler, ArthurPoliticsArguably, p. 604"(...) Darkness at noon: certainly the best jail book since Victor Serge's Men in Prison and almost as influential in combating Stalinism as Nineteen Eighty-four."
Krauss, LawrencePhysicsArguably, p. 145"(...) that was before Carl Sagan and Lawrence Krauss and Steven Weinberg and Stephen Hawking fused language and science (and humor) and clambered up to stand, as Newton himself phrased it, 'on the shoulders of giants.'"
Kundera, MilanLiteratureThe last interview, p. 70"I like Kundera (...) I enjoy him very much. His essays are good too."
Larkin, PhilipLiterature / PoetryHitch-22, p. 171"Our common admiration for Larkin, as a poet if not as a man, arose from the bleak honesty with which he confronted the fucked-up—the expression must be allowed—condition of the country in those years." (...) "Larkin’s innate pessimism, his loyalty to the gritty northern town of Hull (where lay the provincial university that employed him), and his hilarious interest in filth of all kinds were attractive to all of us: likewise his very moving, deliberate refusal of the false consolations of religion (beautifully captured by his “Aubade” and “Churchgoing”) on which not even Kingsley disagreed. However, Larkin’s pungent loathing for the Left, for immigrants, for striking workers, for foreigners and indeed “abroad,” and for London showed that you couldn’t have everything."
Larkin, PhilipPoetryHitch-22, p. 334The Proust Questionnaire:
"Who are your favorite poets?"

"Philip Larkin, Robert Conquest, W.H. Auden, James Fenton, W.B. Yeats, Chidiock Tichbourne, G.K. Chesterton, Wendy Cope."
Lessing, DorisLiterature"The Nobel committee finally gets it right." An article on Dorris Lessing's work."To review the depth and extent of Lessing’s work is to appreciate that some writers really do live for language and are willing to take risks for it. It’s also to understand that there is some relationship between the hunger for truth and the search for the right words. This struggle may be ultimately indefinable and even undecidable, but one damn well knows it when one sees it."
Lockhart, Kamisar, and Choper: Constitutional Law: Cases - Comments - QuestionsHistory / PoliticsHitch-22, p. 252“I (…) decided to read slowly through the Constitution. (...) I sipped my wine and let the small hours advance as I read, and consulted the supporting case law from the great attendant volume of Professors Lockhart, Kamisar, and Choper."
Louis, William Roger: Imperialism at BayHistoryBlood, class, and empire,
p. 344
"(...) as its title implies, it is more prepared to call things by their unambiguous names."
Luxemburgh, RosaPoliticsThe last interview, p. 50"I wouldn't consider anyone truly politically literate if they hadn't given her work at least some study."
Makiya, Kanan: The MonumentHistoryLove, poverty, and war,
p. 473
"(...) a haunting study of the public architecture -"part Nuremberg, part Las Vegas"- of Saddam's Bagdhad."
Makiya, Kanan: The MonumentHistoryHitch-22, p. 299"Possibly the most penetrating of his many books about Saddam and Saddamism is called The Monument. It is an intense, illustrated study of the vast parade ground and double arch in central Baghdad, constructed by Saddam Hussein to immortalize his “triumph” in the wars against Iran."
Makiya, Kanan: The Republic of FearHistoryLove, poverty, and war,
p. 473
"(...) his breath-taking anatomy of the Ba'ath regime."
Márquez, Gabriel GarcíaLiteratureArguably, p. 610"(...) the author, much admired by Isabel Allende, who has most attempted to fuse Marxism with magic? Gabriel García Márquez, in his epic One Hundred Years of Solitude (...)"
Marx' essay: The Eighteenth BrumairePhilosophy / PoliticsArguably, p. 188"(...) his best-ever essay The Eighteenth Brumaire."
McEwan, Ian: On Chesil Beach: A NovelLiterature"Think of England." A review of Ian McEwan: On Chesil Beach: A Novel"A recent article in the London Sunday Times made the matter-of-fact statement that Ian McEwan had emerged in Britain as “our national writer.” I at once understood the justice of this opinion (...)."
McWilliams, Carey: Island on the LandHistoryHitch-22, p. 218"Carey McWilliams, the extraordinary and gentlemanly radical veteran who edited The Nation (still in my future) and whose history of modern California, Island on the Land, was, and still is, considered more or less the book to beat. "
Mlynar, Zdenek: Night FrostHistory / PoliticsFor the sake of argument,
p. 120
"(...) his enthralling memoir (...)"
Mount, Ferdinand: Cream. My Early Life and Other Mistakes
MemoirThe EtThe Eton empireon empire"In his superb recent memoir, Cold Cream (marvelously subtitled My Early Life and Other Mistakes), Mrs. Thatcher’s former adviser Ferdinand Mount—whose cousin Mary is somehow David Cameron’s mother and whose uncle by marriage was in a highly and somehow Etonian way Anthony Powell—dismisses his own Eton years as “an inferno of corporal punishment.”"
Myers, Kevin: Watching the Door"(...) what got people going in Belfast in the early 1970s was not humanism and solidarity but rather violence, cruelty, conspiracy, bigotry, alcohol, and organized crime. (...) The most witty and penetrating first-hand account of this morbid interlude is to be found in Kevin Myers’s memoir Watching the Door.
Nabokov, Vladimir: Bend SinisterLiteratureFor the sake of argument,
p. 117
"(...) this prescient and haunting book (...)"
Nafisi, Azar: Reading Lolita in TehranLiteratureHitch-22, p. 313"Azar Nafisi’s brave, beautiful book Reading Lolita in Tehran: a study of the relations between literature, sexuality, and power under Muslim theocracy that can stand comparison to anything written by Edward Said or even Naguib Mahfouz."
Naipaul, V.S.Literature / Travels"Cruel and unusual." A review of The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul, by Patrick French"V. S. Naipaul has produced works of extraordinary skill— and lived a life of equally extraordinary callousness."
O'Brien, Conor Cruise Writers and PoliticsPoliticsMy Week"(...) the late Conor Cruise O'Brien, whose Writers and Politics is one of the best collections of literary-political essays ever assembled (...)"
O'Brien, Conor Cruise: Writers and PoliticsPoliticsHitch-22, p. 186"In his superb collection of essays Writers and Politics, which influenced me enormously when I first found it in a public library in Devonshire in 1967 (...)."
O'Rourke, P.J.: Holidays in HellEssaysFor the sake of argument,
p. 278
"We all take some intellectual baggage when we set off, but P.J. O'Rourke, whose collected travel writings, Holidays in Hell, has just been published, is positively weighed down."
Orwell, GeorgePoliticsArguably, p. 604"(...) Darkness at noon: certainly the best jail book since Victor Serge's Men in Prison and almost as influential in combating Stalinism as Nineteen Eighty-four."
Orwell, George: Animal farmLiteratureArguably, p. 234"(...) there is a timeless, even transcendent, quality to this little story."
Owen, WilfredPoetryUnacknowledged legislation, p. 10"These are neither novels and nor, in one important sense, are they fictional or imaginary. But I shall never be able to forget the way in which these verses utterly turned over all the furniture of my mind; inverting every conception of order and patriotism and tradition on which I had been brought up."
Pamuk, OrhanLiteratureThe last interview, p. 76"He's a very brilliant Turkish novelist who, I think, is unto something."
Peter Nettl: Rosa LuxemburgBiographyReflections on Antisemitism"echoing a judgment made by Peter Nettl, in his marvelous biography of Rosa Luxemburg"
Popkin, Sam: The Reasoning VoterHistory / PoliticsFor the sake of argument,
p. 47
"(...) the leading student of fluïdity is professor Sam Popkin (...)"
Powell, Anthony: Dance to the music of timeLiteratureUnacknowledged legislation, p. 224"Powell’s novels are unusual in that they leave the religious conscience and experience entirely untreated, and replace it by an emphasis on the numinous and the occult."
Proust, MarcelLiteratureLove, poverty, and war,
p. 109
"To be so perceptive and yet so innocent - that is, in a phrase, the achievement of Proust. It is also why one does well to postpone a complete reading until one is in the middle of life, and one has shared some of the disillusionments and fears, as well as delights, that come with this mediocre actuarial accomplishment."
Revel, Jean-Francois: How Democracies PerishPhilosophyFor the sake of argument,
p. 140
"(...) the soothingly pessimistic How Democracies Perish (...)"
Rushdie, SalmanLiteratureUnacknowledged legislation, p. 13"Ever since his magnificent evocation of combined partition and parturition in Midnight’s Children, he has been raising a body of work which, while deeply based in the love and study of classical English letters, truly deserves the name of cosmopolitan. By his experiments with language and dialect and his conscription of musical themes, he has approached the closest to poetry in prose. He is also, in such a way as to make it indissoluble from his other themes, a political writer for an emerging multi-national and (perhaps this needs no emphasis) secular readership."
Rushdie, Salman: The Jaguar SmileLiteratureFor the sake of argument,
p. 294
"(...) the colonial mercenaries in Nicaragua, who had been so eloquently opposed by Salman Rushdie in The Jaguar Smile."
Russell, Bertrand: The Practice and Theory of BolshevismPoliticsArguably, p. 630"(...) the atheist, socialist and anti-imperialist Bertrand Russell, whoseThe Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920) was the first and in many ways the most penetrating critique."
Sagan, CarlPhysicsArguably, p. 145"(...) that was before Carl Sagan and Lawrence Krauss and Steven Weinberg and Stephen Hawking fused language and science (and humor) and clambered up to stand, as Newton himself phrased it, 'on the shoulders of giants.'"
Schneider, PeterLiteratureThe last interview, p. 71-2"He wrote a cycle of three novels about Berlin. They're all brilliant."
Serge, VictorPoliticsArguably, p. 604"(...) Darkness at noon: certainly the best jail book since Victor Serge's Men in Prison and almost as influential in combating Stalinism as Nineteen Eighty-four."
Serge, Victor: Memoirs of a RevolutionaryHistory / PoliticsFor the sake of argument,
p. 322
"His Memoirs of a Revolutionary is part of the core record of the interwar drama of facism and Stalinism (...)"
Serge, Victor: The Case of Comrade Tulayev / Memoirs of a RevolutionaryHistory / PoliticsHitch-22, p. 91”It seems possible that he was the first person to use the word “totalitarianism.” (…) The Case of Comrade Tulayev which many good judges regard as the earliest and best fictional representation of the show trials and the Great Terror. (…) Serge died (…) but not before producing one of the finest autobiographies of that same century: Memoirs of a Revolutionary.
Serge, Victor: The Case of Comrade Tulayev and Birth of Our Power History / Politics / LiteratureFor the sake of argument,
p. 322
"(...) his novels The Case of Comrade Tulayev and Birth of Our Power have an advantage over Koestler's fiction of revolution and betrayal by virtue of a superior purity and intensity."
Shelley, P.B.: Mask of AnarchyPoetryFor the sake of argument,
p. 222
"(...) one of the finest hymns of hate to authority to have come down to us (...)"
Shute, Nevil: On the beachLiteratureHitch-22, p. 57"(...) his masterpiece (...)"
Simecka, Milan: The Restoration of OrderPoliticsFor the sake of argument,
p. 120
"(...) a leading opposition essayist (...)"
Snyder, TimothyHistoryHitch-22, p. 371"Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, historians have become both more accurate and more honest—fractionally more brave, one might say—about that “other” cleansing of the regions and peoples that were ground to atoms between the upper and nether millstones of Hitlerism and Stalinism. One of the most objective chroniclers is Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University."
Sophocles: AntigoneLiteratureLove, poverty, and war,
p. 465
"All cultures have a natural horror of desecration, that is why Antigone is is the most powerful play of Sophocles."
Steinbeck, John: Grapes of WrathLiteratureLove, poverty, and war,
p. 162
"the following tremendous passage from (...)"
Steyn, Mark: America alone: The end of the world as we know itPolitics / Religion"Facing the islamist menace." A review of Mark Steyn’s America alone: The end of the world as we know it"Mark Steyn believes that demography is destiny, and he makes an immensely convincing case."
Stoker, BramLiteratureFor the sake of argument,
p. 134
"I began to soften in my anti-Dracula resolve when I learned from Transylvanian historians that Ceausescu had forbidden all mention of the Bram Stoker book or the legend. The idea that he still walked seemed implicit in his entire cult of death, and in the haunting effect of his undead minions."
Tichbourne, ChidiockPoetryHitch-22, p. 334The Proust Questionnaire:
"Who are your favorite poets?"

"Philip Larkin, Robert Conquest, W.H. Auden, James Fenton, W.B. Yeats, Chidiock Tichbourne, G.K. Chesterton, Wendy Cope."
Vonnegut, KurtLiteratureThe last interview, p. 59"I usually would read anything he wrote, I guess. Though he's running on empty now."
Vries, Peter deLiteratureHitch-22, p. 135"(...) one of my favorite minor novelists (he could make you laugh out loud, as in Mackarel Plaza,as well as weep, as with Blood of the Lamb (...)"
Wald, Alan: The New York IntellectualsHistory / PoliticsFor the sake of argument,
p. 206
Alan Walds 1987 book The New York Intellectuals is a necessary companion volume and in the long run a more illuminating one, because it shows the germinal, contradictory force of revolutionary politics and the noticable failure of those once singed by it to succeed, however much they may have tried, in escaping its implications.
Waugh, EvelynLiteratureLove, poverty, and war,
p. 77
Weinberg, StevenPhysicsArguably, p. 145"(...) that was before Carl Sagan and Lawrence Krauss and Steven Weinberg and Stephen Hawking fused language and science (and humor) and clambered up to stand, as Newton himself phrased it, 'on the shoulders of giants.'"
Wilde, OscarLiteratureUnacknowledged legislation, p. 20"(...) this great Irish rebel (...)" / "Literature has an unpaid debt to Wilde, and so does philosophy (...)"
Wilde, Oscar: The Importance of Being EarnestLiterature / PlaysUnacknowledged legislation, p. 19"Wilde’s greatest triumph and also his ultimate disgrace. (...)The Importance of Being Earnest, one of the few faultless three-act plays ever written and certainly among the best-loved pieces of stagecraft in history."
Wodehouse, P.G.: Blandings Castle and the Wooster StoriesLiteratureUnacknowledged legislation, p. 69Hitchens approvingly quotes Barry Phelps:

"If your criteria for great literature require Sturm und Drang with penetrating insights into the human predicament then Wodehouse is not great literature. If those criteria include total mastery of written English, the ability to make it dance to your bidding with a poetic beauty and to any job desired and to give joy to readers across the entire spectrum, then Wodehouse is great literature."
Yeats, W.B.PoetryHitch-22, p. 334The Proust Questionnaire:
"Who are your favorite poets?"

"Philip Larkin, Robert Conquest, W.H. Auden, James Fenton, W.B. Yeats, Chidiock Tichbourne, G.K. Chesterton, Wendy Cope."
Young, G.M. Portrait of an ageHistoryFor the sake of argument,
p. 215
"The two greatest freehand exercises in English periodization, G.M. Young's Portrait of an Age and George Dangerfield's Strange Death of Liberal England. (...)"

Bibliography:

  • Hitchens, Christopher (1990) Blood, Class, and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies. Nation Books. [Republished in 2004 as Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship, with a new introduction.]
  • Hitchens, Christopher (1993) For the sake of argument. Essays and minority reports. Verso.
  • Hitchens, Christopher (2000) Unacknowledged legislation: Writers in the public sphere. Verso.
  • Hitchens, Christopher (2004) Love, poverty, and war. Journeys and essays. Nation Books.
  • Hitchens, Christopher (2010) Hitch-22: A memoir. Twelve.
  • Hitchens, Christopher (2011) Arguably. Twelve.
  • Hitchens, Christopher (2017) The last interview and other conversations. Melville House.