A Lifetime of News

About the Book

A Lifetime Of News chronicles Robert L. Kroon’s wartime years in Holland under German occupation and his life as a foreign correspondent, radio and TV journalist that took him from Europe to East Timor and Easter Island and dozens of other countries in between. It looks back on some of the people—some famous, some eccentric, some admirable and others less so—that he interviewed in the course of his career, including the Shah of Iran, Peter Ustinov and Frank Sinatra. In his introduction, Bob Kroon explains that this book is the offshoot of ten years of current affairs lectures aboard international cruise ships, where he discovered that specific anecdotes illuminating the people and places he covered in his 50 years as a roving correspondent would keep the audience awake, while analytical ponderings about the state of the world had many passengers nodding off. After these lectures, people often asked him where his book was. So Bob Kroon decided to share some of the more memorable episodes with a larger audience, focusing on the humanity of people who crossed his path. A Lifetime Of News is a selective, personal chronicle of events and people that shaped his life and career.

About the Author

ROBERT L. KROON was a foreign correspondent for almost 60 years. Born in The Hague, Netherlands in 1924 and a Swiss resident since 1953, his career began in pre-Independence Indonesia as a correspondent with Associated Press. After returning to Europe, he worked mostly for Time–Life, but also for the International Herald Tribune and Dutch and Canadian radio. His linguistic talents (he is fluent in five languages) and convenient Dutch passport got him assigned to hotspots where American correspondents had no access. He worked with the Netherlands Press Association and as a lecturer in current affairs on cruise ships well into his eighties. As he said himself, “I’m too old to quit and too young to stop.”