From the master of literary reportage whose acclaimed books include Shah ofShahs The Emperor and The Shadow of the Sun an intimate account of hisfirst youthful ... » 

From the master of literary reportage whose acclaimed books include Shah ofShahs The Emperor and The Shadow of the Sun an intimate account of hisfirst youthful forays beyond the Iron Curtain. Just out of university in 1955Kapuscinski told his editor that hed like to go abroad. Dreaming no fartherthan Czechoslovakia the young reporter found himself sent to India. Wideeyedand captivated he would discover in those days his lifes workto understandand describe the world in its remotest reaches in all its multiplicity. Fromthe rituals of sunrise at Persepolis to the incongruity of Louis Armstrongperforming before a stonefaced crowd in Khartoum Kapuscinski gives us thenonWestern world as he first saw it through stillvirginal Western eyes. Thecompanion on his travels a volume of Herodotus a gift from his first boss.Whether in China Poland Iran or the Congo it was the father of historyand as Kapuscinski would realize of globalismwho helped the youngcorrespondent to make sense of events to find the story where it did notobviously exist. It is this great forerunners spiritboth supremely worldlyand innately Occidentalthat would continue to whet Kapuscinskis ravenousappetite for discovering the broader world and that has made him our ownindispensable companion on any leg of that perpetual journey. «