After leaving Warsaw Michael Kaufman spent a year writing a book about Poland, "Mad Dreams, Saving Graces," which was published by Random House in 1989. He had by then returned to The New York Times where he served as deputy foreign editor for the next three years. He edited Times reportage into two books, one called "The Collapse of Communism," and the other, "The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Empire." In 1992 he shifted gears and became a boulevardier in his beloved New York, writing a column for the Times about the lives, dreams and dramas of ordinary folk. That lasted for three happy years. Then in 1995 he accepted an offer from George Soros's Open Society Institute to go to Prague and edit a magazine called Transitions about the post communist world. That proved interesting, challenging and intriguing. In 1998 he returned to the Times as senior obituary writer. He retired from the paper a year later to write a biography of Soros, which was published by Knopf earlier this year. He currently is considering several possible writing projects but his most creative work in that last six months has involved playing with his four grandsons and cooing at his infant grand daughter.