NY Times: Christopher Hitchens, a slashing polemicist in the tradition of Thomas Paine and George Orwell who trained his sights on targets as various as Henry Kissinger, the British monarchy and Mother Teresa, wrote a best-seller attacking religious belief, and dismayed his former comrades on the left by enthusiastically supporting the American-led war in Iraq, died Thursday at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He was 62.
Michael Stravato for The New York Times
Christopher Hitchens a few hours after being released from the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston in October.The cause was pneumonia, a complication of esophageal cancer, said the magazine Vanity Fair, which announced the death. In recent days Mr. Hitchens had stopped treatment and entered hospice care at the Houston hospital. He learned he had cancer while on a publicity tour in 2010 for his memoir,“Hitch-22,” and began writing and, on television, speaking about his illness frequently.
“In whatever kind of a ‘race’ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist,” Mr. Hitchens wrote in Vanity Fair, for which he was a contributing editor.
Read more here.
Past deaths from esophageal cancer:
Harmon Killebrew, Hall of Fame Slugger for the Minnesota Twins - died May 2011
Ron Silver, actor - died March 2009
Tom Lantos, US Representative from N. California - died Feb 2008
Ann Richards, governor of Texas - died Sept 2006
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