SOURCE: Grigg, John. “Still Playing Happy Families.” Spectator (6 May 1989): 27–28.

In the following review, Grigg offers a mixed assessment of Prepared for the Worst.

There are few journalists whose work can bear reprinting, but Christopher Hitchens is one of them. The collection [Prepared for the Worst] now published includes pieces of varying length, which first appeared in British or American journals within the past decade or so (the earliest in 1977). Some will be familiar to readers of the Spectator: for instance, his account of a meeting with Jorge Luis Borges, and a number of pieces castigating the Reagan régime. Mr Hitchens is a formidable arguer and a very sharp observer, writing with wit and force from the point of view of an unrepentant man of the Left. Though he lives in the United States, he rejects the prevailing ethos of American life and continues to proclaim the gospel...