Mortality - Christopher Hitchens

Mortality

By Christopher Hitchens

  • Release Date: 2012-09-04
  • Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Score: 4
4
From 348 Ratings

Description

On June 8, 2010, while on a book tour for his bestselling memoir, Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens was stricken in his New York hotel room with excruciating pain in his chest and thorax. As he would later write in the first of a series of award-winning columns for Vanity Fair, he suddenly found himself being deported "from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady." Over the next eighteen months, until his death in Houston on December 15, 2011, he wrote constantly and brilliantly on politics and culture, astonishing readers with his capacity for superior work even in extremis.

Throughout the course of his ordeal battling esophageal cancer, Hitchens adamantly and bravely refused the solace of religion, preferring to confront death with both eyes open. In this riveting account of his affliction, Hitchens poignantly describes the torments of illness, discusses its taboos, and explores how disease transforms experience and changes our relationship to the world around us. By turns personal and philosophical, Hitchens embraces the full panoply of human emotions as cancer invades his body and compels him to grapple with the enigma of death.

Mortality is the exemplary story of one man's refusal to cower in the face of the unknown, as well as a searching look at the human predicament. Crisp and vivid, veined throughout with penetrating intelligence, Hitchens's testament is a courageous and lucid work of literature, an affirmation of the dignity and worth of man.

Reviews

  • Brilliant though not Stirring

    4
    By AppleJumper
    No one could ever fault Hitchens for his incisive, analytical wit. And his approach to death is no less wanting. Still, in approaching his own end, one would have wanted to engage some deeper emotional soul, even if tagging behind his brilliant mind like a lost puppy. But we are who we are. And I try not to fault the man for being the man he is, even to the end. In that sense, his work suffers no pretense. So, perhaps I wished for a wizard behind the curtain and was disappointed to find none. I would encourage all to read the book. Well written, sharp, and sadly ending before it was finished, much like the man himself.
  • Great book

    5
    By w&sp
    This is the 1st book I've read, by Christopher Hitchens, now I find myself ready to read all the rest of his work. Will definitely miss watching, and hearing him debate, unworthy opponents, on either side of the argument he chose to champion
  • Couldn't put it down

    5
    By Omnium316
    Lucky for me the book is short, because I could not put it down.
  • Hitchens at End

    4
    By Amy Wilentz
    Fun, short, and smart.
  • Incomparable

    5
    By Pudgy fatty
    Especially poignant to read this on the day a bunch of silly old men in red dresses are gathering in Rome to choose their new Queen. How I wish he were here to mock them.
  • Too bad

    1
    By 50gjh
    Hoped he would have seen the light of Christ in the end but his incredible pride wouldn't allow.
  • Rip off

    1
    By industrygal
    The least a reader could know ahead is gat the book is about 70 pages. Hardly justifies the cost of the book. No matter who wrote it!
  • Disappointed

    2
    By Jobar_12
    I presume to think the author would be disappointed. There's not that much beyond the Vanity Fair piece to justify the price of the book. I should have known from the downloaded sample, but the glowing reviews pulled me on.
  • Excellence in a short book.

    5
    By M382
    The best book I have read in quite a while. Exquisitely written; beautifully executed, and with something to teach - Should be mentioned I am a Christian and thought this book very worth reading. So much to think about; so much to take away from it.
  • Indeed, the last word.

    4
    By Irma Sturgell
    I felt like a voyeur watching him die.

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