Essayist Christopher Hitchens ruminates on why Charles Dickens was among the best of writers and the worst of men, the haunting science fiction of J.G. Ballard, the enduring legacies of Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell, the persistent agonies of anti-Semitism and jihad, the enduring relevance of Karl Marx, and how politics justifies itself by culture--and how the latter prompts the former.

Collected essays previously published in various periodicals, 1999-2011. Includes index.

All American. Gods of our fathers: the United States of enlightenment -- The private Jefferson -- Jefferson vs. the Muslim pirates -- Benjamin Franklin: free and easy -- John Brown: the man who ended slavery -- Abraham Lincoln: misery's child -- Mark Twain: American radical -- Upton Sinclair: a capitalist primer -- JFK: in sickness and by stealth -- Saul Bellow: the great assimilator -- Vladimir Nabokov: Hurricane Lolita -- John Updike: No way ; Mr. Geniality -- Vidal Loco -- America the Banana Republic -- An Anglosphere future -- Political animals -- Old enough to die -- In defense of foxhole atheists -- In search of the Washington novel -- Eclectic Affinities. Isaac Newton: flaws of gravity -- The men who made England: Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall" -- Edmund Burke: reactionary prophet -- Samuel Johnson: demons and dictionaries -- Gustave Flaubert: I'm with Stupide -- The dark side of Dickens -- Marx's journalism: the Grub Street years -- Rebecca West: things worth fighting for -- Ezra Pound: a revolutionary simpleton -- On "Animal Farm" -- Jessica Mitford's poison pen -- W. Somerset Maugham: Poor Old Willie -- Evelyn Waugh: the permanent adolescent -- P. G. Wodehouse: The Honorable Schoolboy -- Anthony Powell: An Omnivorous Curiosity -- John Buchan: Spy Thriller's Father -- Graham Greene: I'll be damned -- Death from a salesman: Graham Greene's bottle ontology -- Loving Philip Larkin -- Stephen Spender: a nice bloody fool -- Edward Upward: the captive mind -- C. L. R. James: mid off, not right on -- J. G. Ballard: the catastrophist -- Fraser's Flashman: scoundrel time -- Fleet Street's finest: from Waugh to Frayn -- Saki: where the wild things are -- Harry Potter: the boy who lived -- Amusements, annoyances, and disappointments. Why women aren't funny -- Stieg Larsson: the author who played with fire -- As American as apple pie -- So many men's rooms, so little time -- The new commandments -- In your face -- Wine drinkers of the world, unite -- Charles, Prince of Piffle -- Offshore accounts. Afghanistan's dangerous bet -- First, silence the whistle-blower -- Believe me, it's torture -- Iran's waiting game -- Long live democratic seismology -- Benazir Bhutto: daughter of destiny -- From Abbottabad to worse -- The perils of partition -- Algeria: a French quarrel -- The case of Orientalism -- Edward Said: where the Twain should have met -- The swastika and the cedar -- Holiday in Iraq -- Tunisia: at the desert's edge -- What happened to the suicide bombers of Jerusalem? -- Childhood's end: an African nightmare -- The Vietnam Syndrome -- Once upon a time in Germany -- Worse than "Nineteen Eighty-four" -- North Korea: A nation of racist dwarves -- The eighteenth brumaire of the Castro dynasty -- Hugo Boss -- Is the Euro doomed? -- Overstating Jewish power -- The case for humanitarian intervention -- Legacies of totalitarianism. Victor Serge: pictures from an inquisition -- André Malraux: one man's fate -- Arthur Koestler: the zealot -- Isabel Allende: Chile Redux -- The Persian version -- Martin Amis: lightness at midnight -- Imagining Hitler -- Victor Klemperer: survivor -- A war worth fighting -- Just give peace a chance? -- W. G. Sebald: requiem for Germany -- Words' worth. When the king saved God -- Let them eat pork rinds -- Stand up for Denmark! -- Eschew the taboo -- She's no fundamentalist -- Burned out -- Easter charade -- Don't mince words -- History and mystery -- Words matter -- This was not looting -- The "other" L-word -- The you decade -- Suck it up -- A very, very dirty word -- Prisoner of shelves.