Savage & Wise
'Letters to a Young Contrarian' is Christopher Hitchens' contribution to Art of Mentoring, a series published by Basic Books. This slim volume shows him at his quintessential best, inspiring future generations of radicals, gadflies, mavericks, rebels, and angry young men and offering them the wisdom of a seasoned campaigner. The book follows the format of Rainer Maria Rilke's 'Letters to a Young Poet,' and should be, even to the many readers who disagree with Hitchens, or find him overly polemical and brash, eminently readable. For Hitchens remains one of the greatest English language prose stylists, and few of his contemporaries can invest the written page with so much elegance, grace, and rhythm.
