The planned worldwide tour for the book was cut short later the same month during the American leg so that the author could begin treatment for newly diagnosed esophageal cancer.

[1] Through the book's publisher and in the magazine for which he was a regular contributing editor, Vanity Fair, Hitchens announced: 'I regret having had to cancel so many engagements at such short notice.

And "I hope it will not seem presumptuous to assume that anybody likely to have got as far as acquiring this paperback edition of my memoir will know that it was written by someone who, without appreciating it at the time, had become seriously and perhaps mortally ill...

"[5][6] Comments from critic Dwight Garner's article in The New York Times Book Review are quoted on the back cover.

He has a mind like a Swiss Army knife, ready to carve up or unbolt an opponent's arguments with a flick of the wrist.