“This book was written and published upon the persistent urging of a dear friend and colleague of mine. He believed that most of us old-timers depart from this life leaving behind us nothing of the events we lived as reporters and on which we thus have a personal viewpoint. If all these people, my colleague added, took the trouble to write even just a few pages about the most significant events they experienced, younger people would have access to information and ensure direct briefing about these events. Even scholars and those engaged in history would find some useful facts in these pages to assist the better understanding of every period from the historical viewpoint. […]

The chapters were written at different moments, between professional pursuits, at times permitted by my weakened health and the dramatic events of the past seven years, which deprived us of the best, most precious thing in a journalist’s work:  freedom of the press. […]

[…] I have simply put down on paper in a narrative way and in some chronological order wherever possible,  very few of all the events I have lived through over the past sixty years […]” (Prologue, p. 10)