A long (435 pages) but never dull memoir by the late (died this year) Anglo-American bad boy, atheist, essayist and all-around polymath. Hitchens describes his upbringing (his father, Commander H of the Royal Navy and his mother, Yvonne, his secretly Jewish wife who commits suicide after running away with another man), his literary friendships (Martin Ames, Ian McEwen, James Fenton, Salmon Rushdie), his Trotskyist-based support for the Cypriots, Kurds, Vietnamese, Palestinians), his writing (New Statesman, Nation), and his atheism and support for the Iraq war. A fascinating and readable insight into this complex man. I wish I had had a chance to hear him before he died.