Kerissa Ward's Reviews > The Trial of Henry Kissinger

Great book for political intrigue fans. This was the book the documentary of the same name pulls most of its information. The author is also interviewed extensively in the documentary.

What is nice about the book, though, is that Christopher Hitchens is able to explore more areas of foreign policy than the film. Two examples include an incident with an American merchant ship captured off the coast of Cambodia and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus.

Hitchens is very fond of the high-score SAT words, so I feel embarassed to admit that I had trouble understanding what he was saying at times. However, it is nothing a little sentence re-reading and definition deduction cannot overcome.

One thing I do appreciate is that Hitchens does not condescend to the reader. He assumes that the person reading the book is fluent enough in 20th century US history and foreign policy that he doesn't have to go into detail about the context of a situation. This is a trait his other books and essays also share, and it is what makes Hitchens such a strong writer.

If you want to read the book and are not accustomed to reading political or intellectual texts, I would suggest watching the film first. That way you will be able to follow the events in the book a bit better.