Going back to the early Greeks, Hitchens introduces selected essays of past and present philosophers, scientists, and other thinkers such as Lucretius, Benedict de Spinoza, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Mark Twain, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Emma Goldman, H. L. Mencken, Albert Einstein, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Victor J. Stenger and Richard Dawkins − with original pieces by Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Death is certain ... Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love.

For Hitchens, arguments for atheism can be divided into two main categories: those that dispute the existence of God and those that demonstrate the ill effects of religion.

"One is continually told, as an unbeliever", he writes, "that it is old-fashioned to rail against the primitive stupidities and cruelties of religion because after all, in these enlightened times, the old superstitions have died away.

He reminds readers that Hamas – which publishes The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion on its website – won a reputation for its provision of social services.