A Few Good Books

Seth Faison works as a crisis communications advisor in New York. He is also an avid reader and sometime book reviewer.

Seth spent 12 years living in China, mostly as a journalist. As a 25-year-old looking for adventure, he went to Xi'an, an ancient city known for the tomb of the Terra-cotta warriors, and enrolled in Chinese classes at a university. He spent two years studying the language, loving its concise beauty and hating its maddening complexity. He traveled by train, truck and boat, exploring almost every province in China. He became a reporter at the Hong Kong Standard, and within two years became a correspondent in Beijing, where he covered the Tiananmen student movement and massacre for the South China Morning Post. He joined the New York Times in 1991, covering New York City and specializing in Asian Organized Crime and people smuggling. He was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize for spot news coverage of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. In 1995, he was named Bureau Chief in Shanghai, where he served five years, writing about the deep social and economic change underway, and earning a reputation as a writer with a knack for capturing the moods and flavors of China. His book, "South of the Clouds," was published in 2004.