Far and away : reporting from the brink of change : seven continents, twenty-five years / Andrew Solomon.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 533-554) and index.

Dispatches from everywhere -- The winter palettes -- Three days in August -- Young Russia's defiant decadence -- Their irony, humor (and art) can save China -- The artists of South Africa: separate, and equal -- Vlady's conquests -- "Don't mess with our cultural patrimony!" -- On each palette, a choice of political colors -- Sailing to Byzantium -- Enchanting Zambia -- Phaly Nuon's three steps -- The open spaces of Mongolia -- Inventing the conversation -- Naked, covered in ram's blood, drinking a Coke, and feeling pretty good -- An awakening after the Taliban -- Museum without walls -- Song of Solomons -- Children of bad memories -- Circle of fire: letter from Libya -- All the food in China -- Outward opulence for inner peace: the Qianlong Garden of Retirement -- Adventures in Antarctica -- When everyone signs -- Rio, city of hope -- In bed with the president of Ghana? -- Gay, Jewish, mentally ill, and a sponsor of gypsies in Romania -- Myanmar's moment -- Lost at the surface.

Psychologist, lecturer and activist Andrew Solomon's essays about places undergoing seismic political and cultural shifts, around the globe and across a generation. A testament to the importance of travel and bearing witness, they encompass South Africa and Brazil, China and Romania, Guatemala and the Solomon Islands, exploring history as it unfolds, largely through the people who are creating and being shaped by it. He learns from former political prisoners, transgender bartenders, rape victims, and shamans. He describes staring down tanks on the barricades in Moscow during the putsch that ended the Soviet Union, being left adrift at the Great Barrier Reef and brought in for questioning in Qaddafi's Libya, and carousing all night in Kabul with musicians finally able to play again after the US invasion drove away the Taliban. Far and Away chronicles a life's journey to the nexus of hope, courage, and the uncertainty of lived experience, while illuminating the development of Solomon's singularly insightful and empathetic worldview. These essays are rooted in intimate, deeply moving stories that reveal and revel in our common humanity.