I’ve just finished Christopher Hitchens’s short book, Why Orwell Matters, and will say a few words about it for readers who might be interested. My verdict: it’s worth a read, but only if you a) like Christopher Hitchens and, more important, b) have read a lot of Orwell.
If anyone has served as a role model for Hitchens, it’s Orwell. Orwell (born Eric Blair) was a man of action who served as a policeman in Burma and fought in the Spanish Civil war, was a wonderful writer with a clear and direct prose style (Orwell is to the essay what Hemingway was to the short story), and had a deep interest in politics, presenting uncompromising—and usually liberal—views to the public. Orwell had a keen ear for bullshit (just read his essay “Politics and the English Language”), constantly alerting readers when their leaders were duping them. You’ll recognize these as…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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