Discussed in this essay: Arguably: Essays, by Christopher Hitchens. Twelve. 788 pages. $30.
Writing of John F. Kennedy’s numerous ailments, Christopher Hitchens describes this would-be Achilles as a “poxed and suppurating Philoctetes” and notes that his life was remarkable not for being cut so short but for lasting so long. Of a later president, George W. Bush, Hitchens observes that his eyes are set close enough together for him to use a monocle rather than a pair of glasses. Prince Charles he dismisses as “a morose bat-eared and chinless man, prematurely aged, and with the most abysmal taste in…