For over a quarter of a century, award-winning journalist Henry Bradsher
reported stories from around the world. In this lively and engaging
account, Bradsher recounts episodes from a distinguished career that
took him to the Himalayas, the jungles of Bhutan, Kremlin caviar
receptions, China s Forbidden City, and the battlefields of Vietnam.
Throughout, Bradsher emphasizes the unpredictability of a correspondent s
life and the strains, perils, and privileges of standing witness to
momentous world events.
In South Asia, Bradsher reported the
Dalai Lama s escape from Tibet in 1959 and the last five years that
Jawaharlal Nehru led India with a side trip to hunt tigers in Nepal with
Queen Elizabeth. In Moscow he covered the downfall of Nikita
Khrushchev, and he later suffered the KGB bombing of his car in response
to his tenacious reporting. His incisive coverage from Hong Kong led
Chinese officials to label Bradsher as the most despicable journalist.
But after a power shift, they welcomed him as the first American
journalist allowed to work in China in over a year. Bradsher predicted
and reported Bangladesh s independence struggle, and he worked in the
Middle East, covering Egyptian-Israeli peace arrangements.
Access
to the events that shaped the Cold War also led to Bradsher s meeting
many world leaders, including Nehru, Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Zhou
Enlai, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Anwar
Sadat, and Menachem Begin. Although Bradsher s reporting riled officials
in Moscow, Beijing, and even the United States prompting Henry
Kissinger s attempts to thwart the publication of his reports history
has proven its accuracy. Bradsher s relentlessness in his own work
accompanied a profound respect for fellow journalists worldwide who
endanger themselves to keep the public informed.
Henry S. Bradsher was a correspondent for the Associated Press and the Washington Star. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for international reporting in 1972 and won the George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting in 1973. He is now retired.
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