Michael T. Kaufman (1938-2010) was a foreign correspondent, reporter, and columnist for The New York Times who chronicled despotic regimes in Europe and Africa, the fall of Communism, and the changing American scene for four decades. He covered wars, revolutions, politics and America’s turbulent 1960s. But he also explored the foibles of raising children in a violent world, his father’s years as a political prisoner in Poland, and his family’s escape from invading Nazis in World War II.
Kaufman also wrote for The New York Times Magazine, notably a 1985 account of his 82-year-old father’s return to Poland after 50 years in exile. For a decade after retiring in 1999, he wrote obituaries of world and national leaders. Along with his thousands of articles, Kaufman’s books included Mad Dreams, Saving Graces: Poland: A Nation in Conspiracy (1989), Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire (2003), Rooftops & Alleys: Adventures with a City Kid, In Their Own Good Time, 1968 (2009), and, with Bernard Gwertzman, The Collapse of Communism (1991) and The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Empire (1992).
