Saturday, November 15, 2008

Grayling and Hitchens discuss Among the Dead Cities

A couple of years ago I stated my intention to review A.C. Grayling's Among the Dead Cities, a book which examines the ethics of Allied civilian bombing during WWII. Unfortunately, I finished the book but never got around to writing a review, despite what I feel is the book's ongoing relevance to the current state of world affairs. Thankfully, however, I noticed that the the BookTV discussion of the book is hosted at Fora.tv - the talk is about two hours long and also features Christopher Hitchens who debates Grayling on the justification of bombing civilian targets during war. The bit below is a 15 minute sample clip, to watch the whole thing you can either click the preceding Fora.tv link or the "Watch Full Program" button on the video.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did you know that "debate", when used as a verb, is transitive (taking a direct object), defined as "to argue (usually in a formal manner) about (a subject)"?

In your introduction, therefore, Christopher Hitchens is apparently arguing whether Grayling ......No, it is just incomprehensible nonsense.

I would assume you intended to give the impression that Hitchens is debating the subject of the justification of bombing civilians with A C Grayling.

Hume's Ghost said...
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Hume's Ghost said...
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Hume's Ghost said...

Did you know that ...

Apparently not."

"I would assume you intended to give the impression that Hitchens is debating the subject of the justification of bombing civilians with A C Grayling."

I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that about 49 out of 50 people would get that impression. However, I'll try and keep this in mind next time.

Anonymous said...
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