Mark Patinkin has been writing a thrice-weekly column for the Providence Journal for over 20 years. In 1989, he and Ira Magaziner co-authored "The Silent War'' (Random House), a Book-Of-The-Month Club selection on how U.S. companies compete against foreign rivals. In 1985, he spent a month in Africa writing about famine, later publishing "An African Journey.''

In 1986, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in international reporting for a newspaper series on religious violence in Belfast, India and Beirut. That same year, he covered the collapse of communism in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Moscow and Romania, where he was arrested for trying to interview a dissident.

Patinkin also did a 1991 series from Israel, the West Bank and Gaza on the Arab-Israeli conflict. He spent several years, part-time, doing a television talk show and ``video columns'' for local network affiliates, receiving three New England Emmy awards. He has also published two humor books and a collection of his columns.

Mark grew up in Chicago, graduated from Middlebury College and lives in Providence with his wife and three children.