What might have been found on the bookshelves of the late great Christopher Hitchens?
Photo respectfully borrowed from somewhere out there on the interwebs….
I’ve often wondered what was on the bookshelves of the late Christopher Hitchens. (I’ve read a fair amount of his work, and he is sort of a personal hero of mine.) I’d seen photos of his bookshelves in his Washington D.C. apartment before, and I had been keeping a rough list of books he mentioned in his writing over the years. Books that were important to him. Books that amused him. Books that perhaps, helped shape who he was. I finally asked “Claude” to help me assemble a list of books that were likely on Hitch’s shelves, based on his own writings, citations, interviews, etc…. the page below is what Claude came up with. I’ve not verified any of these titles, but as I scroll through I can certainly identify PLENTY of these titles that I know Hitchens read and had mentioned through the years. For what it’s worth… everything below the dotted line is Claude’s 1st stab at compiling Hitch’s bookshelves for me. I’m delighted!!!
A Reader’s Reconstruction
The Library of Christopher Hitchens
A working bibliography assembled from Hitchens’s own essays and memoirs (Hitch-22, Arguably, And Yet…), his anthology The Portable Atheist, interviews, and a reading list he compiled for a young reader — not a photographed inventory of his Washington, D.C. shelves, which has never been publicly catalogued.
Literature & Fiction
91 titles- 001
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History & Politics of the 20th Century
27 titles- 092
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Politics & Economics
15 titles- 119
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Science
11 titlesOverlaps with Philosophy & Religion: several of Hitchens's favored science writers (Sagan, Stenger, Dawkins) wrote directly on the God question and are cross-referenced there as well.
- 134
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Philosophy & Religion
47 titles- 145
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