Journalist, critic and eminent atheist Christopher Hitchens died today of pneumonia, a complication of esophageal cancer; he was 62. A longtime columnist for Vanity Fair magazine, where he was famously waterboarded, Hitchens had a long and distinguished career as a public intellectual who savored a debate as much as he loved his Scotch and cigarettes. He wrote about everything from Charles Dickens to Iran, and wasn’t afraid of butchering a sacred cow or two—witness “The Missionary Position,” his takedown of Mother Teresa. His literary oeuvre is lengthy, varied and provocative, the perfect record of the travels and passions of a singular man of letters with a voracious philosophical appetite.
Arguably
His most recent book, Arguably, is a mammoth compendium of the polemicist’s best work, and a perfect showcase of the talents of a divisive but always incisive professional contrarian.
Hitch-22
In his remarkably revealing memoir, Hitchens detailed his journey from 1970s Socialist to hawkish supporter of the invasion of Iraq, and all the warzones—literal, political, personal—visited between.
God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
Hitchens investigates all of religion and found it uniformly lacking. To promote the book, Hitchens toured the country to debate leading religious thinkers.
More from the Hitchens reading list:
Christopher Hitchen’s book (I believe his first ever) HOSTAGE TO HISTORY: CYPRUS: FROM THE OTTOMANS TO KISSINGER (originally published under the title CYPRUS in 1984, on the tenth anniversary of Turkey’s miltary invasion of the Republic of Cyprus) still ranks as one of his finest and one of the very best on the subject. It is in that book that he first exposed Kissinger’s cynical policies in the eastern Mediterranean that contributed greatly to the 1974 tragedy of the people of Cyprus, a tragedy that could have been easily avoided. He remained committed to the cause of Cyprus to the very end and his main thesis (that sinister regional and international forces, with Kissinger considered a primary culprit, colluded to dissolve the Republic of Cyprus and to partition the island) has stood the test of time. In fact his position is supported and has been strengthened through declassified documents that have been published since his book came out. He kept raising his voice against the continuing miltary aggression by Turkey against Cyprus (an EU and UN member state) that has keeps the country and its people divided by force of arms with nearly forty percent of its sovereign (and EU) territory under miltary occupation since 1974. Hitchens has written passionately against the ethnic cleansing, the cultural genocide, the massive violation of human rights and the illegal colonization that Turkey has systematically implemented in occupied Cyprus. And he has argued forcefully for an end to this international aggression and for the reunification of Cyprus and its people. Here is how he ends his book on Cyprus: “We are all prisoner sof knowledge. To know that Cyprus was betrayed , and to have studied the record of that betrayal, is to make oneself unhappy and to spoil, perhaps for ever, one’s pleasure invisiting one of the world’s ,ost enhanting islands. Notheing will ever restore the looted treasures, the bereaved families, the plundered villages and the groves and hillsides scalded with napalm. Nor will anything mitigate the record of the callous and crude politicians who regarded Cyprus as something on which to scribble their inane and conceited designs. But fatalism would be the worst betrayal of all. The acceptance, the legitimization of what was done-those things must be repudiated. Such a refusal has a value beyond Cyprus, in showing that acquiescence in injustice is not ‘realism’. Once injustice has ben nset down and described, and called by its right name, acquiescence in it becomes impossible. That is why one writes about Cyprus in sorrow but more-much more-in anger.”
May he rest in peace and may his call for a free and reunited Cyprus become a reality soon.
MILTO
THIS WAS A PERFECT ANALYSIS OF HITCHEN’S WORK
I WILL NEVER FORGET OUR ASSOCIATION WHEN YOU WERE IN THE EMBASSY IN WASHINGTON
AFTER 30 YEARS I WAS REMOVED FROM SERVICE AS HONORARY CONSUL GENERAL BUT I STILL SUPPORT THE CYPRUS EFFORTS
BILL