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 last night at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He was 62.

 

Polemicist Who Slashed All, Freely, With Wit (New York Times)