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."
Famous quotes containing the words journeys and/or essays:
“... she was a woman. She had been taught from her earliest childhood to make use of this talent which God had endowed her, would be an outrage against society; so she lived for a few years, going through the routine of breakfasts and dinners, journeys and parties, that society demanded of her, and at last sank into her grave, after having been of little use to the world or herself.”
—Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826–1898)
“I have been reporting club meetings for four years and I am tired of hearing reviews of the books I was brought up on. I am tired of amateur performances at occasions announced to be for purposes either of enjoyment or improvement. I am tired of suffering under the pretense of acquiring culture. I am tired of hearing the word “culture” used so wantonly. I am tired of essays that let no guilty author escape quotation.”
—Josephine Woodward, U.S. author. As quoted in Everyone Was Brave, ch. 3, by William L. O’Neill (1969)