SOURCE: McKibbin, Ross. “Against It.” London Review of Books (24 February 1994): 18.

In the following review, McKibbin offers a generally positive assessment of For the Sake of Argument, however, he cites limitations in Hitchens's “oppositional” stance.

Christopher Hitchens may not be ‘the nearest thing to a one-man band since I. F. Stone laid down his pen,’ but he comes close. For the Sake of Argument records a life of action, of being in the right place at the right time. Thomas Mann could never find the revolution: Hitchens cannot help tripping over it. This is, no doubt, the privilege of the foreign correspondent, but some are clearly more privileged than others. He turns up in Central America, in Central Europe, in Eastern Europe, in the Middle East, always at the crucial historical moment: he can extract from these moments a tragic episode or a comic anecdote which illuminates the whole...