Two events led to two essays related to Christopher Hitchens stitched into one here : (1) a book published after his death claiming that Hitch kept “two sets of books” about his religious beliefs – his public set as an atheist and his private set flirting with believing in God and religious faith; (2) Hitch’s death on December 15, 2011. My motives for each are self-evident within. so let me add parenthetically here that eight years on after he left us, Hitch’s voice is needed now more than ever. He was such a penetrating thinker on the deepest questions of our time. We live in troubled times; then again, Hitch lived in troubled times, and his stabilizing voice of reason and rationality gave us a deeper understanding of what was going on in our world, and lacking that intellectual foundation on which to rest our anxious souls only adds to the grief those of us who knew him already feel.