Dull - Rated 
There are lots of flaws with this book which others have picked up and argued over. I'd like to add that it's dull.
Good fun,but flawed - Rated 
Well,I suppose somebody had to do it!The 20th century's most sacred of sacred cows subject to something other than hero worship.Hitchens writes well,and his examples of Mother Theresa's politicking in Ireland,Haiti,the USA and elsewhere are entertaining reading.I thoroughly enjoyed him putting the boot into Malcolm Muggeridge and other uncritical Theresa-worshippers.Hitchens is also realistic enough to know that Theresa was only partially responsible for the hero-worship that surrounded her in her lifetime,lots of it was the responsibility of gullible journalists.
However,it would have been nice if Hitchens did point out that Theresa did say while she was alive that she didn't think she was a saint,and thought she shouldn't be made one after her death-she appears to have had some insight into the unreality that surrounded her.
The major flaw inthe book is Hitchens' fundamental misconception that Catholic nuns can be anything other than Catholics.Does he really think that Theresa,or any other nun,would support abortion on demand,or indeed anything that the Vatican forbids?If,in some alternate universe,Theresa did so,she wouldn't be a catholic nun for very long.
The book is outrageously overpriced(£10 for less than 100 pages!!)so buy it secondhand or get it out of a library.
The superior of all mothers is brought down. - Rated 
This book is a tremendous indictment of one of the most over praised women in the last hundred years. Referring to various acts of cynicism and callousness Hitchens wages a concrete but brief attack on her reputation; her support for the notorious Duvalier Family, her support for the crook Charles Keating who rightfully should have the title of the American Maxwell. But the biggest and most shocking judgement passed on her holiness is her appalling treatment of the people whom she was lauded for supposedly serving. While many may claim in her support that she fleeced the bad to aid the good there is no evidence that she was a 20th century Robin Hood. She may have been good at taking from the rich but she never quite managed to get around to giving it to the poor.
There are two key points here, which are at the centre of this book. One, what actually was her deeds and there effects? Also more importantly the fact that any kind of demand for proof of her greatness has never been demanded before this book. In the first area he unearths that she did not in fact direct her fundraising cause towards helping the poor but actually channelled it into her cause of catholic fundamentalism. Her famous Calcutta home for the dying was literally that. This was a theological death camp where people under the order of Mother Theresa were not even allowed to sympathise with those for whom they were meant to care. There never was more poignant evidence of her cynicism than the pictures of this place; the money she had collected instead of being deployed to buy medicine or pay for better conditions was used to militarise thousands of nuns of her order. It is very convincingly proved here that because of her actions thousands perhaps even millions of people suffered and died because of what she did and poverty has been made more prevalent not less so because of her actions.
But more fundamental to this book is the analysis of the cultural attitude towards her. Christopher Hitchens does a fine job of showing how the liberal establishment will fall down at the feet of any person based on the thinnest of Chinese whispers. For in the end this book ironically is not about Mother Theresa or even religion, it is about the cowardliness of the secular who applaud the so-called good works of people like Mrs. T for cynical and credulous reasons. Here's a book that asks us whenever someone has disproportional amounts of acclaim heaped upon them to ask why? That's a start.
where the cash goes - Rated
In many places around the globe one runs into the sisters of Mother Teresa's order. With the homeless in the UK, in London, Swansea and I don't know how many other cities, I observe quite a few nuns working in the various houses. These cost money to run, mouths to feed, recreation or retreat times, transport, training costs etc. . Then there are the Missionary establishments in some very far away countries. Surely this is where the money goes, or am I missing something?
Not what it claims to be - Rated 
Mr. Hitchens is guilty of intellectual dishonesty, muddle-headedness, or some degree of both in the way he frames his attack on the figure of Mother Theresa. By and large what he says is true, but what it amounts to is not so much an indictment of Mother Theresa as an attack on the religion she represented, one that holds, for instance, that salvation is more important than health or confort, that suffering may be a way to greater holiness, and that abortion is a grievous sin. I understand how someone like Mr. Hitchens might disagree with these views (indeed, I am an atheist and disagree with them too), but the book amounts to the shocking revelation that Mother Theresa was (gasp!) a traditional Catholic.
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