“I fear the bastard is closing in,” my friend Neil King ominously texted me on Aug. 4. And he was right. The bastard was closing in, indeed. Neil fought him off valiantly, trying every treatment available — even, for two weeks, enduring two bouts of radiation a day. But on Sept. 17, the bastard finally caught up with him. Neil King died of complications of esophageal cancer at the age of 65.

I knew and loved Neil as a neighbor, friend and walking partner. But the world knew Neil as a bon vivant, world traveler, author and accomplished journalist. After stringing in Washington for a couple of smaller papers, in the early 190s, King went to Prague, where Neil and his wife Shailagh were both soon hired by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), filing insightful, haunting accounts of Eastern Europe struggling to recover from the Cold War.

Back in the states, Neil joined the WSJ’s........

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