Fascinating, revelatory, and powerful, Butterfly Mind 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.

A foreign correspondent since 1980, Patrick Brown has reported on China since 1989. He has also covered revolutions, elections, wars, and disaster throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. His radio and television reports in English and French have won several awards. Born in Birmingham, England and educated at Downing College, Cambridge, he lived and worked in Montreal throughout the 1970s. He lives in Beijing.

Patrick Brown's profile page

...a modest, engaging reportage, marked by affection and curiosity, tinged with grace.

Winnipeg Free Press

...a striking study of the eerie parallels between the struggles with alcohol and autocrats...[Butterfly Mind is] an incisive analysis of the major political convulsions of the past three decades by someone who's witnessed a good number. Brown weaves his own decline into a larger tale of tyranny and resistance in Lebanon, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Burma, Bulgaria, and, especially, China...

Walrus

...compelling...The reportage, too, is excellent...

Globe and Mail

...fascinating...Brown's personal story distinguishes Butterfly Mind from other I-was-there journalist memoirs...

Montreal Gazette