Christopher Hitchens

**Christopher Eric Hitchens** (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an Anglo-American atheist, writer and debater. He wrote for various magazines including _The Nation_, _Free Inquiry_, _Slate_, and others.  He was a supporter of the philosophical movement humanism.

Hitchens was educated at Balliol College, Oxford. After graduation in 1970, he became a magazine writer. In 1982, he moved to Washington, D.C. In 1988, he learned from his grandmother that his mother was Jewish, but had kept her religion a secret.  Hitchens remained an atheist and did not adopt any religious faith. He did not write about his religious views until his 2007 book _God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything._

Hitchens tried to write from first-hand experience.  To write his essays, he braved gunfire in Sarajevo, he was jailed in Czechoslovakia, and in 2008, he was brutally beaten in Beirut, Lebanon. In 2009, Hitchens agreed to be waterboarded. He wrote in _Vanity Fair_ magazine, "If waterboarding does not constitute torture then there is no such thing as torture".

Hitchens died of oesophageal cancer.

## Books by Hitchens

- 1984 _Cyprus_. Quartet. Revised editions as _Hostage to history: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger_, 1989.
- 1988 _Blaming the Victims: spurious scholarship and the Palestinian question_. (contributor, and co-editor with Edward Said) Verso,
- 1990 _The Monarchy_, Chatto & Windus
- 1990 _Blood, class and nostalgia: Anglo-American ironies_, Farrar Straus & Giroux.
- 1995 _The missionary position: Mother Teresa in theory and practice_, Verso
- 1997 _The Parthenon marbles: the case for reunification_, Verso
- 1999 _No one left to lie to: the values of the worst family_, Verso
- 2000 _Unacknowledged legislation: writers in the public sphere_, Verso
- 2001 _The trial of Henry Kissinger_. Verso.
- 2001 _Letters to a young contrarian_, Basic Books
- 2002 _Why Orwell matters_ also _Orwell's Victory_, Basic Books,
- 2004 _Love, poverty, and war: journeys and essays_, Thunder's Mouth, Nation Books.
- 2005 _Thomas Jefferson: author of America_. Eminent Lives/Atlas Books/HarperCollins Publishers,
- 2007 _Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: a biography_. Atlantic Monthly Press,
- 2007 _The Portable Atheist: essential readings for the non-believer_. (Editor) Perseus Publishing. . https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0306816083/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0446579807&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1QP0FHNTZGAPNAPRAANP
- 2007 _God is not great: how religion poisons everything_, Twelve/Hachette Book Group USA/Warner Books,  / Published in the UK as _God is not great: the case against religion_, Atlantic Books, . http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/books_9780446579803.htm
- 2008 _Christopher Hitchens and his critics: terror, Iraq and the Left_. (with Simon Cottee and Thomas Cushman), New York University Press
- 2008 _Is Christianity good for the world?—A Debate_ (co-author, with theologian Douglas Wilson). Canon Press. . http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Is-Christianity-Good-for-the-World/Christopher-Hitchens/e/9781591280538
- 2010 _Hitch-22: a memoir_, Twelve.
- 2011 _Arguably: essays by Christopher Hitchens_. Twelve. UK edition as _Arguably: selected prose_, Atlantic,  /
- 2012 _Mortality_. Twelve,  / . Atlantic Books,  /

## Other websites

- The Christopher Hitchens Web

## Infobox (writer)

- **name**: Christopher Hitchens
- **image**: Christopher Hitchens crop.jpg
- **caption**: Christopher Hitchens, 2007
- **birth name**: Christopher Eric Hitchens
- **birth place**: Portsmouth, Hampshire, England
- **death date**: 15 December 2011 (aged 62)
- **death place**: Houston, Texas, United States
- **occupation**: Author, journalist, activism, activist, Pundit (expert), pundit
- **alma mater**: Balliol College, Oxford
- **nationality**: British people, British, United States, American
- **genre**: Polemicism, journalism, essays, biography, literary criticism