Hilarious. Poignant. Inspiring. That’s how early readers are describing Finding the Story.  It’s the jaunty story of high-profile journalist revisiting  the mistakes of his life and the mysterious forces that kept him afloat.

This memoir is my sixth nonfiction book, and it’s written to entertain. I’m in trouble from the opening pages onward, as the lone American in a banquet room full of Russians knocking back vodka shots. As a 26-year-old journalist on his first foreign assignment, I’m way out of my depth. But it’s too late to back down — then, now or ever.

For the next 30 years, I can’t stop running. I’m a foot messenger for a day, getting screamed at by the lewd boss of Screw magazine. I’m a guest of British royalty, watching Prince Charles play polo. As a young guy, I ride on the roof of a mountain bus in Nepal with an intriguing new girlfriend, hoping that we don’t fall off and die. Much later, I share in a Pulitzer Prize as a writer at The Wall Street Journal.

Amid all this excitement, do I even understand my own story? My early years have been a shambles, with wrong-headed choices about alcohol, women, housing and more. Is there still time to get it right?

Redemtion starts by turning my storytelling skills toward kindness, rather than scandal. But the biggest transformation comes in the book’s final pages. That’s when I finally find the clarity (and the humility) to write deeply about my father’s courage during World War II. Sometimes the biggest heroes are the people we’ve known forever.