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:
“It was a favor for which to be forever silent to be shown this vision. The earth beneath had become such a flitting thing of lights and shadows as the clouds had been before. It was not merely veiled to me, but it had passed away like the phantom of a shadow, skias onar, and this new platform was gained. As I had climbed above storm and cloud, so by successive days’ journeys I might reach the region of eternal day, beyond the tapering shadow of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What are these essays but grotesque and monstrous bodies, pieced together of different members, without any definite shape, without any order, coherence, or proportion, except they be accidental?”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)