Overview

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Lewis M. Simons recollects his fifty years as a foreign correspondent, one whose powerful stories contributed to transforming Asia from Vietnam War-era basket case to a global boomtown that today rivals the United States. Simons's investigative work led to the toppling of a dictator in the Philippines. He covered the Tiananmen Square massacre in China, bloody coups in Thailand, attempted genocide and societal collapse in Cambodia, and economic advance, decline, and rebirth in Japan. He was expelled from India for his exclusive reporting on Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's political misuse of the armed forces. Breaking his own strict rule against becoming personally involved with people whose stories he covered, he saved the life of a dying teenaged Tibetan Buddhist monk. Simons molds the narrative of his lengthy, action-packed career from foxhole mud and backroom dirt. Layered with moments of tenderness and humor, as his camp-following family often accompanies him, the result is a masterful chronicle of war and murder; extreme poverty and suffering alongside repellent wealth and indulgence; wholesale larceny and ruling-class corruption--much of which escaped the scrutiny of other journalists. Listeners who appreciate real-life historic drama will be enthralled.

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Pulitzer Prize-winner Lewis M. Simons began his career as a foreign correspondent in 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War. He saw the war through to the end, covering the fall in quick succession of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Since then, Simons has reported on war, civil unrest, politics, and economics from throughout Southeast Asia; India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh; Iraq and Iran; China, Japan, North Korea, and South Korea, as well as the former Soviet Union. He was a staff correspondent for The Associated Press, the Washington Post, Time, and Knight-Ridder Newspapers. Simons won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1986 for exposing the billions that the Marcos family looted from the Philippines. Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism named the series one of 50 Great Stories of the Century. Simons was twice more a Pulitzer finalist and has received numerous other journalism awards, including the George Polk, and was an Edward R. Murrow Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. Simons's op-ed and analytical articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, Atlantic, and Smithsonian magazines. He has contributed frequently to National Geographic and his work is published in USA Today, where he is a member of its Board of Contributors, the Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, and Daily Kos. He has appeared on ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, BBC, and CBC. He is coauthor with Senator Christopher S. Bond of The Next Front: Southeast Asia and the Road to Global Peace with Islam. He also is author of Worth Dying For and a contributing author of half a dozen books on war and international affairs. A former U.S. Marine, he is a graduate of New York University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is married to fellow journalist Carol Simons. They have three adult children and reside in Washington, DC. Graham Rowat is an award-winning narrator who has appeared in numerous television shows and stage productions. He has had roles on Broadway in Meteor Shower, Sunset Boulevard, Mamma Mia, Guys and Dolls, LoveMusik, Dracula, and Beauty and the Beast, and his Off-Broadway credits include The Blue Flower (Second Stage) and The Boys in the Band (Transport Group). Nationally, he has appeared in productions of White Christmas and Les Miserables, and his regional credits include Arsenic and Old Lace, Constellations (Berkshire Theatre Festival), and A Funny Thing . . . Forum (Two River Theater, Williamstown Theatre Festival). His television credits include Elementary and The Good Wife. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, was born in 1935 to a peasant family in northeastern Tibet and was recognized at the age of two as the reincarnation of his predecessor. As the world's foremost Buddhist leader, he travels extensively, speaking eloquently in favor of ecumenical understanding, kindness and compassion, respect for the environment, and world peace. He is the author of over seventy books and has received a number of awards, honorary doctorates, and other accolades for his work.

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