Friday, December 16, 2011

Christopher Hitchens Dies at 62



December 16, 2011 on ABC News:
Christopher Hitchens, the maverick essayist, unabashed atheist and cable television gladiator whose long list of targets included Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, and even Mother Teresa and organized religion, has died of complications from pneumonia, a complication of esophageal cancer. He was 62.

Hitchens died Thursday at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, according to a statement released by Vanity Fair late Thursday night.

"There will never be another like Christopher. A man of ferocious intellect, who was as vibrant on the page as he was at the bar," Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter said in the statement. "Those who read him felt they knew him, and those who knew him were profoundly fortunate souls."

Born in Britain April 13, 1949, and educated at Oxford, Hitchens authored more than a dozen books. He achieved his greatest notoriety with the 2007 best-seller "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," in which he dismissed faith as wish fulfillment and religion as "the main source of hatred in the world."

With its publication, Hitchens became the public face of atheism. Critics assumed his cancer diagnosis, in 2010, would lead Hitchens to relent and embrace God. But he remained a proud non-believer to the very end, as he made clear in an early October 2011 speech at the annual Atheist Alliance of America convention in Houston, as he accepted the Freethinker of the Year Award.
Read more
See also:
In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens - Vanity Fair
Christopher Hitchens Remembered - Slate
'A great voice falls silent': Christopher Hitchens tributes pour in on Twitter
Christopher Hitchens' Amazon page

No comments:

Post a Comment