I started as a journalist, I learned my industry as a reporter in the Times Foreign Affairs office, where we, the burgeoning journalists, retired for the opportunity to help in the big stories. One day in June in the summer of 1989, however, there were more than enough stories for everyone. Three of them shook the world: the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and the coming pressures for reforms and liberal rights, the great exodus of East Germans seeking to escape Hungary to the west and 50 days of protest, riddled with bullets by the army in Tiananmen Square.