Acting in the role of prosecutor, Hitchens presents Kissinger's involvement in a series of alleged war crimes in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Bangladesh, Chile, Cyprus and East Timor.

"[2] The book takes the form of a prosecutorial document, as Hitchens limits his critique to such charges as he believes might stand up in an international court of law following precedents set at Nuremberg and elsewhere.

In the author's words, "They can either persist in averting their gaze from the egregious impunity enjoyed by a notorious war criminal and lawbreaker, or they can become seized by the exalted standards to which they continually hold everyone else.

"[6] Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch praised the book, saying it "persuasively marshals the long-known, as well as the recently declassified, evidence" of Kissinger's involvement in things such as the 1973 Chile coup and the bombing of Indochina.

[7] Vietnam War whistleblower Fred Branfman argued that "only a nation in deep spiritual and psychological disarray could honor a man with as much blood on his hands as Henry Kissinger" and wrote that "[Hitchens's] book deserves much wider attention.