SOURCE: Hitchens, Christopher. “Acts of Violence in Grosvenor Square.” London Review of Books 20, no. 11 (4 June 1998): 14-15.

In the following excerpt, Hitchens contends that Ali provides a vivid portrayal of the 1960s world climate in 1968: Marching in the Streets.

I was just beginning to write about 1968 when I learned of the death in New Orleans of Ron Ridenhour, the GI who exposed the massacre at My Lai. He was only 52, which means that he was in his early twenties when, as a helicopter gunner in the area, he learned of the murder of nearly 660 Vietnamese civilians. This was not some panicky ‘collateral damage’ firefight: the men of Charlie Company took a long time to dishonour and dismember the women, round up and despatch the children and make the rest of the villagers lie down in ditches while they walked up and down shooting them. Not one of the allegedly...