Journalist Seymour Topping, chairman of the editorial board of World Policy Journal, sits down with Public Access Television's Harold Channer to talk about his new book, On the Front Lines of the Cold War: An American Correspondent’s Journal from the Chinese Civil War to the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam. After serving as an infantry officer in the Pacific during World War II, Topping became a foreign correspondent for the International News Service in 1946 covering the Chinese civil war in North China and Manchuria. He joined the Associated Press in 1948 covering the French Indochina War, the Vietnam War, and later Berlin before joining The New York Times Company in 1959 serving as chief correspondent in Moscow and Southeast Asia. He became foreign editor in 1963 and retired from The Times in 1987 after ten years as managing editor. From 1993 to 2002 he served as director of the Pulitzer Prizes and professor of international journalism at Columbia's School of Journalism. He is currently an Emeritus professor. Topping has previously written three books: Journey Between Two Chinas, The Peking Letter: A Novel of the Chinese Civil War and Fatal Crossroads: A Novel of Vietnam 1945.
Seymour Topping "On the Front Lines of the Cold War" from Lesley Topping on Vimeo.