Richard Walton - Journalistic Career

Journalistic Career

As a print journalist, he worked for The Providence Journal (1954-1955) and then for the New York World-Telegram and The New York Sun (1955-1959). He then returned to radio for the Voice of America (VOA), first in Washington, D.C. as producer-host of Report to Africa (1959-1962) and then in New York City as principal United Nations correspondent (1962-1967). In 1960, he traveled extensively in Africa making a series of documentaries on the independence movement, interviewing many of the post-colonial leaders including Patrice Lumumba.

In 1967 he left VOA to write his first book, The Remnants of Power: The Tragic Last Years of Adlai Stevenson (1968). Eleven other books followed, notably America and the Cold War (1969), The United States and Latin America (1971, ISBN 0-8164-3074-8), Cold War and Counterrevolution: The Foreign Policy of John F. Kennedy (1972, ISBN 0-14-021627-8), Henry Wallace, Harry Truman and the Cold War (1976, ISBN 0-670-36859-8), The Power of Oil (1979, ISBN 0-8164-3186-8), and The United States and the Far East (1979, ISBN 0-395-28931-9). He has contributed articles to numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, The New Republic, Saturday Review, Cosmopolitan, and Playboy. He was an early member of the National Book Critics Circle.