Wow. He did it. He did dying just as he did living.
He faced his mortality with a steadfast gaze, as well as his trademark wit, humour, and incessant curiosity. His real most deep-seated fear was of losing his ability to express himself, of not being able to talk or to write.
He does still get the last word. I love that this book comes out posthumously. It's as if he is talking to us right now: "And another thing!"
His wife Carol Blue wrote a moving afterword in which she described their 'new wor More...

This short collection of writings done by Christopher Hitchens detailing his experience with cancer, dying and mortality reminds me in no little way of a 21st century Montaigne. While I was expecting Hitchen's stoic materialism to jump off the page, I was also surprised by his gentleness. This is a man who loved life. He loved his family. He loved his friends. He loved to think, to write and to speak. Is there any greater testament to a life well-lived than to read or listen to a man's final wor More...

A book on the dark subject of death that lightens the load with straight shots of clarity, honesty, and a form of wisdom. For those who loved the cultural critic Hitchens as a voice of truth that perfectly balanced logic and wit, fear not the potentials for emotional devastation in this discourse on his own process of death from esophageal cancer. It’s short enough to be read in one sitting and contains no self-pity. He gave me some courage about my own mortality.

The book contains several essays More...

This is proving very hard to write about.

Hitch was a writer, to his core. I know this just through the sense of his writings - that's how I met so many other interesting people. It was something which defined him.

To this extent, it's not too surprising that new books come out after he has passed. This little collection of essays are meditative, a little self-pitying, but mostly as dignified as cancer would let him be. Fierce and stoic, almost up to the very end.

He was funny, provocative, and ch More...

Hitchens writes: "If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does." -pg. 91.

There's no denying the integrity in his life, nor the intellect and wit in his speaking and writing.

But what can I make of this book? It was an easy enough read, but the fact that we're approaching the topic from two diametrically opposed worldviews made it challenging. Is it enough that we respect one another, or give some semblance of respect?


I've watched Hitchens debate religion an More...

This short (just over 100 pages) book is last written by Christopher Hitchens as he entered the final stages of cancer. It is an unsentimental treatment of the experience of dying in which Hitchens dismisses well-intentioned but painful offerings of comfort with an intellect that remains powerful and confident even as his body weakens. Hitchens is adamant that he is not fighting cancer. It's the other way round, and it is a fight that he cannot win. He turns to Nietzsche, Mencken and Auden to de More...

Christopher Hitchens, conhecido autor e jornalista, relata neste seu livro de memórias, a sua batalha contra o cancro. Mas este não é o típico livro de memórias. É certamente mais que isso. É um livro que traz à luz reflexões sobre o que é estar naquele espaço de tempo que não é propriamente vida, mas que também não é morte. É aquele interlúdio em que ainda temos esperança de vencer a morte, mas sabemos que não estaremos vivos por muito tempo. Christopher Hitchens, ao contar a sua experiência co More...

Avassalador! Escrito durante os 19 meses em que esteve doente com cancro, Hitchens continua corajosamente a defender, ��s portas da morte, o que sempre defendeu toda a vida e confronta-nos com a nossa pr��pria mortalidade.

"Ao longo da minha vida, j�� tinha acordado, mais de uma vez, com a sensa����o de morte. Nada, no entanto, me havia preparado para a madrugada de junho em que acordei a sentir-me realmente preso dentro do meu pr��prio cad��ver."

"�� pergunta absurda ��Porqu�� eu?��, o cosmos mal More...

Whatever one's opinion on Christopher Hitchens' religious views, it's indisputable that the man can write. This collection of essays was penned after his diagnosis of terminal esophageal cancer and before his untimely death.

The focus of this book is more about his experience of dying of cancer than anything else, but his chapter on the varying responses of Christians to his diagnosis is among the richest in the book. The contrast between those who gleefully indulged in their belief that this wa More...

Christopher Hitchens died a year ago next month (Dec. 2011). These rememberances are of the eighteen months he spent preparing for death and hoping for life. His terminal diagnosis was esophageal cancer, a hideous disease that effects the ability to speak. Although wisdom is everywhere present in his last essays for Vanity Fair reproduced in MORTALITY, it is to this loss that he addresses so intimately that I wish to share.

"Most despond-inducing and alarming of all, so far, was the moment when m More...

In the Foreword of this little pamphlet of a book, Graydon Carter claims that it contains some of Hitchens' best writing, which are pretty strong words, but he's not wrong. A sample:

In one way, I suppose, I have been "in denial" for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely that reason, I can't see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it's all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper int More...

Reading this book I wanted to understand how terminal illness really felt not for morbid reasons but for true empathy. Who other than Hitch could I trust to fling away euphemism & give me the honest truth? Hitch does so remarkably but you can't help but mourn the tragedy of it as he recounts his dashed hopes with new treatments and his fears of losing his voice.

Painfully, Carol Blue's Afterword reveals how his death in the end on December 15, 2011 was unexpected, that he was charismatic eve More...

I got this on Kindle. 1/3.

He talked quite freely about his illness, and the reaction he got from the Christian faithful. Really good as it is in his voice (I could hear his voice in my head when I read this thin book.)

2/3

The later part he talked about rude persons he met on saying all the wrong thing to him. And how losing his voice is the thing that bothered him the most. He ended the voice saying he wants his "freedom of speech".

It is heartbreaking to see a great man going throw pain and me More...

Published just after his death, this is a short book (or lengthy essay depending on how you look at it) about a man coming to terms with his own impending death at the hands of lung cancer. Christopher Hitchens was a polemicist, a political commentator, an eloquent writer and deeply thoughtful human being who was just at home with a cutting remark against his opponents as he was with proseltyzing atheistic philosophy.

This is a poignant chronicle of the final months of the life of "The Hitch" yet More...

(Abbreviated, obviously, and this review makes allowances for that.)

What is here of Hitchens' final book is of a piece with all his writing: relentlessly clear-eyed, articulate about all kinds of awful things that usually mute lesser writers, and enriched by such a vastly well-read mind that he makes even a brief essay about, say, a phlebotomist's troubles finding a vein into a meditation on how torture works its subtler evils.

Was a bit annoyed by what appears to be an editorial oversight: The More...

I'm jet-setting in and out of the waking life, literally, my eyes open just as the plane lifts off from the terminal tracks. I am heading toward the "Sunshine State" they call it, others: A Place to Die. But I am not aware of where i am going as i easily flip through the pages of "Mortality".


When I land we head towards the hospital, where I have living proof of Christopher Hitchens' mortality; (but right before a conversation on American--pardon, privatized health care [and paying for organs in More...

Book Review
Mortality by Christopher Hitchens

t is be fitting that thoughts of mortality should crop up at the end of 2012, an eventful year that seemed to have run off too fast.

On New Year’s Day, 2013, I read Christopher Hitchens’ ‘Mortality’ that focused on the last 18 months of Christopher Hitchens’ life of cancer, a time when he lived ‘dyingly’. His father had died at the age of 79 with a similar cancer. A 61 Hitchens felt he could possibly outdo that, live longer than this father. He would li More...

It was only in the last few months of Christopher Hitchens' life that I came to truly appreciate his work. I sincerely regret not receiving a chance to meet him in person, but there is solace in the written legacy he leaves behind. He was an intellectual that I aspire to, and someone who I will continue to discover for years to come. He left us too soon, but his personal and formative influence on many is profound.

The collection of final essays that comprises Mortality is brief, but gripping an More...

This small book is Christopher Hitchen's record of his year "living dyingly," notes written in the months leading up to his death of esophageal cancer on December 15, 2011. The English-speaking world of recent decades has seen few more articulate and intelligent polemicists than Hitchens. And the positions he argued so passionately (e.g., "there is no god") earned him the respect of some and the hate of others. As he discusses here, many "kind" believers saw his demise as God's punishment and fe More...

Diagnosed with esophageal cancer, Christopher Hitchens, who wrote for Vanity Fair, the Atlantic magazine, and Slate for many years, pits his spirit and intelligence against the disease and his own mortality. He is famous for being an atheist and confronts cliches about illness and the many euphemisms we use when talking about terminal illness and the "big C." During the eighteen months from his initial diagnosis until his death he continues to write and be engaged with his many circles of collea More...

Once upon a time there was a man named Jake. He was tall and kind and always rocked an amusingly dapper mustache, but his mustache wasn't hip or trendy so much as it was just perpetually on his face. His face without a mustache? We can't independently verify such a face ever existed.

He spoke softly and laughed easily and preferred Barbera wine to all others. A Boston native, he was of course a loyal Red Sox fan. He was also smart, a lover of trees, and managed his employees as if they were frie More...

P.T. Barnum is alleged to have said, "There's no such thing as bad press, so long as they spell your name right." But what is one supposed to do when the press is good, but the spelling is not?

Shoot the messenger, bite the hand ... and toot one's own horn, I guess. So damn the clichés and full speed ahead.

I suppose I would better have done all of the above when I first got my complimentary copies of the magazine in the mail back in December, but illness and the press of other business got in the More...

A brief collection of thoughts and essays by a vibrant and witty mind as he comes to terms with the body that he is rather than the body one might say he had. Christopher Hitchens is well-known for his voice in public debates and lectures, book launches and gatherings of friends and colleagues over extended dinners of mind as much as food. Here he also comes to terms with the loss of voice brought on by his esophageal cancer, and the potential loss of written voice as well.

The final chapter may More...

A lovely, short book, written very much with the voice of Christopher Hitchens, about his cancer and his life. The afterword by his wife was particularly moving. Throughout, his personality shines. Having seen him talk in Edinburgh, and on many YouTube videos, I can just imagine his humour, his will to live and to speak and to regale and prod and learn and, well, be himself.

He's always been immensely quotable, and he paints some lovely (and sometimes very moving) scenes using his quick tongue. H More...

I guess it is never easy to write about dying. More so, when you know it is coming at you, day by day, almost second by second. Christopher Hitchens, one of the greatest writers that Britain has ever produced and not even the tumor in his esophagus could stop him from writing. I have yet to read one of his greatest works, his memoir, called, Hitch-22, but for me, for now, “Mortality” has been a rollercoaster of a read.

“Mortality” is a book, a short book collecting the essays that Hitchens wrote More...

Most know of Christopher Hitchens' recent death from esophageal cancer (Stage IV, there is no Stage V). Most know of his towering intellect through his writing, lecturing and debating skills. Most know him as one of the most prominent literary figures of our time. Most also know him as a concerned atheist.
This book details his final stages of cancer in first person. He writes in detail of his treatment, his caregivers, those who wish him well and those who don't, because of his rejection of rel More...

Mortality, by Christopher Hitchens, Narrated by Simon Prebble, produced by Hachette Audio, downloaded from audible.com.

This is a collection of Hitchen’s writings from the time he learned that he had esophageal cancer to his death 19 months later. It is preceded by an introduction from a good friend, and there is a postscript by his wife, Carol. At the end of the book are notes that he didn’t get to include in the book before he died on December 15, 2011, and he wrote almost to the very end of hi More...

Regardless of what you might think of Hitchens on a personal level, about his views on religion and politics, this is still an excellent book. While he does inject his opinions on these issues in it, they are no what this book is about. Any critiques of religion and/or politics are specifically regarding the political and religious aspects of dying. What this book is about is dying, or more specifically, about Hitchens dying. It's about everything he went through during his treatment and how he More...

I'd never read Hitchens before, only religiously - no pun intended - scoured the internet for debates where he clinically embedded himself in my mind. To my benefit, this made reading this book ridiculously more pleasurable. Hitch has the most susceptible tone of voice imaginable, so being able to hear it so distinctly only reinforced the conviction he already showed in speech after speech.

That being said, I found that most of the pages seeped that vague hint of melancholy - although I don't th More...

When in one's life ought one to read a serious book about death? There are obviously times that are either too early or too late, but judging from the current popularity of Christopher Hitchens' Mortality on Amazon, plus the number of reviews of it on Goodreads, a lot of people are finding a suitable middle course. Perhaps they have figured out that carpe diem makes no sense absent the realization that one's days are numbered. And given that the Reaper's final string of digits may arrive unpredi More...