"Perhaps you’ve heard of Christopher Hitchens. He is a British writer and cultural commentator who lives and works in Washington, D.C. For decades now, he has been observing the political/societal scene and writing about it in a particularly insightful, witty and acerbic manner.

Early in his career, he was something of a Trotskyite, but in the years following September 11, 2001, he emerged as a strong advocate of the Iraq war and, much to the chagrin of his colleagues on the left, a supporter of George W. Bush. He is best known, certainly, for his recent contributions as a critic of religion. His book "God is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything" appeared a couple of years ago and proved to be a bestseller.

Since the publication of this text, Hitchens has traveled the country debating a series of religious thinkers—Christian, Muslim and Jewish—meeting them with an extremely swift mind and wickedly barbed tongue. Along with Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins, he is one of the “four horsemen” of the New Atheism, the movement that advocates an aggressive, take-no-prisoners approach to the claims of faith.

I think it’s fair to say that Hitchens is playing today the role that another brilliant Englishman, Bertrand Russell, played nearly a century ago, namely that of religion’s public enemy No. 1.

Just a few weeks ago, I picked up Hitchens’s latest, an autobiography entitled "Hitch-22." The book is a lot like the man: by turns funny, strange, deeply wise, infuriating, outrageous, critical, sometimes just plain baffling—and never dull..."