Butterfly mind

Fascinating, revelatory, and powerful, Butterfly MindM is a memorable work from a renowned reporter on the front line of history.

In this memoir, award-winning journalist Patrick Brown weaves together three stories: the first is Brown's own education as a journalist over the past twenty-five years, and his parallel struggle with alcoholism. The second is the major political events of the past quarter century that Brown witnessed and covered -- including the shipyard in Gdansk, Poland, where the Solidarity movement began; Cambodia, where Brown reported on the impact of the Paris Peace Treaty; the fall of the Berlin Wall and the revolution in Czechoslovakia; and the wars in Afghanistan in 1992 and 2002. The third story is about China, which Brown first visited in 1989 during the Tiananmen Square protests and now calls home.

By comparing and contrasting his experiences as a foreign correspondent in societies in flux, Brown beautifully reveals how life in China today is both unique and surprisingly familiar, and how a so-called butterfly mind -- the ability to flit from one subject to the next with great flexibility and facility -- has allowed him to thrive in the middle of it.