Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship

I feel compelled to write a short review of this book in order to underscore how badly I feel that many of the leftist reviewers here have misunderstood it, probably based on no more than reading the title if history is any judge. This book IS NOT some bloated Noam Chomsky fairy tale about America and its misdeeds throughout time; it IS a very nice survey of the 'special relationship' between America and Great Britain, and its enduring components of blood, class, and nostalgia (as the original title that I own went). So, look elsewhere for loony paranoid fantasies; here you will only find the usual intelligent Hitchens style.

While I like this book quite a bit - vintage Hitchens -- he makes one dreadful error on page 138, when he's talking about English as the semi-official language of the US. He says that "as late as 1795, the House of Representatives narrowly defeated a motion that all its documents and proceedings be printed also in German. The tie vote was cast by the Speaker, one Friedrich Muhlenberg."This ain't so. Muhlenberg was the Speaker, and a vote did fall one short -- but it wasn't to print in German, it was merely to table such a motion for consideration later. It failed, and thus the motion was dropped forever. It was never voted on at all.(...)

This is an explication of a notion most citizens think they already know and believe they understand intuitively. This was my feeling as, in the course of browsing I examined the only book by Christopher Hitchens on my local library shelf. I was frankly disappointed, looking to this author for controversy and insight. Or should I say outrageousness? As in the case of his well reasoned but totally pointless indictment of Henry Kissinger for war crimes. Anyway, finding the topic uninspiring and disinclined to go to the bother to check it out, but having the time, I read the first 2 chapters and was genuinely astonished to find the book truly engaging! Now that I've finished it, and although I'm unsure if I agree with the author that the direction of the circumstances of the relationship between the 2 countries were NOT inevitable, I think knowing the subject in detail is most worthwhile. The author thinks there were occasions when we were free of the Old World notions of class and the imperial style of politics they engender, and in the position to resist these notions. And that we'd be better for it if we had. It seems to me conventional thinking labels this attitude isolationism and inevitably resists it as parochial. But the idea that we should be (or should have been) strict in defining Americanism ourselves, and resist Old World insinuations as to the course it should follow is, indeed, insightful. And the historic detail is truly enlightening. Altogether this IS a very interesting, if not startling, book.

"Boom! Pow! That's the way it all goes down when C.H. comes to town!" "That's an odd thing for Charlie Rose to say," I remarked to my wife, Sunderquist, the other day. Well, my apologies Mr Rose, you were right on. Right on the money! Hitchens, the leading attack dog of the sensible left, fixes his eye on Brittania and plucks big. Where else were we to learn that Evelyn Waugh thought Buck Henry was "kind of queer"? Not from Highlights, I'll tell you that, Sunderquist. Gracefully turned on high quality pulp and written in English this book sure beats Cleopatra's Needle, with a stick. A big metal stick that really cuttingly insults what it's about to smash. Yeah.