After a lifetime of reporting all over the world, after writing eight thrillers and one unusual cookbook, and after a stint as a university professor, I finally retired. But my muse grabbed hold of me once again and I have written a collection of essays that I hope the reader will savor as much as I savored living them and writing about them. THE FOG OF WAR tells of a traumatic situation in which I came within seconds of shooting and killing a man I believed to be a Vietcong assassin. ARMEGEDON OVER CUBA tells a first-person account of how close the United States came during the Cuban Missile Crisis to a full-scale nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. RUSSIA WITH LOVE relates how the Russians kept throwing beautiful young women at me in hopes of unmasking me as a CIA agent. CHINA MISSION tells how Chinese officials showed me a super-secret underground bomb shelter in Beijing as part of a clever ploy to open military-to-military talks with the United States. Join me in reliving 33 experiences of a lifetime.