Ryszard Kapuscinski (March 4, 1932 - January 23, 2007) was a popular Polish journalist, author, publicist and poet both at home and abroad.
Born in Piñsk, a city that was formerly located in the Kresy Wschodnie (Eastern Borderlands) of the Second Polish Republic and now belongs to Belarus, Kapu?ciñski is generally thought of as Poland’s leading journalist. In the years 1954-1981 he was a member of Polish United Workers’ Party. In 1964, after honing his skills on domestic stories, he “was appointed by the Polish Press Agency (PAP) as its only foreign correspondent, and for the next ten years he was ‘responsible’ for fifty countries.”
Throughout this period, Kapu?ciñski traveled around the developing world and reported on wars, coups and revolutions in Asia, Europe and the Americas; including the Soccer War a “bloody, scarcely believable conflict that Honduras and El Salvador waged in 1969 over a pair of soccer games.” When he finally returned to Poland, he had lived through twenty-seven revolutions and coups. In the English speaking world, Kapu?ciñski is best known for his reporting from Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, when he witnessed first-hand the end of the European colonial empires on that continent.
Source- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryszard_Kapu%C5%9Bci%C5%84ski
