While it’s tempting to see Charles Dickens as a fusion of his heroes and villains, on the great British novelist’s 200th birthday his true gifts should be recognized: a respect for childhood and a willingness to atone for his mistakes.

Reviewing familiar principles and maxims in the face of mortal illness, Christopher Hitchens has found one of them increasingly ridiculous: “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” Oh, really? Take the case of the philosopher to whom that line is usually attributed, Friedrich Nietzsche, who lost his mind to what was probably syphilis. Or America’s homegrown philosopher Sidney Hook, who survived a stroke and wished he hadn’t. Or, indeed, the author, viciously weakened by the very medicine that is keeping him alive.

Why is the United States so wedded to the infliction of the death penalty?

Questioning the moral heroism of India’s most revered figure.

An unbeliever argues that our language and culture are incomplete without a 400-year-old book—the King James translation of the Bible. Spurned by the Establishment, it really represents a triumph for rebellion and dissent. Accept no substitutes!

Remembering an intellectual heroine.

A history of the Baghdad Express illuminates the resilience of politicized Islam.

Since leaving 10 Downing Street, Tony Blair has faced continuing public condemnation for leading the U.K. into Iraq, converted to Catholicism, and plunged into the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Debating Blair in Toronto, the author finds the former prime minister battered but unapologetic.

Peach pits, open chakras, macrobiotic diets: cancer patients get more unsolicited advice than they could possibly follow. Cutting-edge medicine seems to offer limitless options, too—until the author runs smack into the lethal idiocy of the godly opponents of stem-cell research.

Tony Blair’s memoir reveals him to be neither a cynic nor an innocent, but a man of some principle.