Richard Patrick Critchfield was born on March 23, 1931 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Ralph James and Anne Louise (Williams) Critchfield.  The family lived at Fessenden, North Dakota at the time and until 1932 when they moved to Fargo, North Dakota.  Richard Critchfield received his B.A. from the University of Washington, Seattle.  In 1957 he received his M.S. in journalism from Columbia University and did additional graduate work at the Universities of Vienna and Innsbruck as well as Northwestern University.

In his career as a journalist and author, Richard Critchfield reported from all over the world, concentrating mainly on the Third World.  He wrote for the Christian Science Monitor, The Economist, The New York Times, Reader's Digest, The Wall Street Journal, American University Fieldstaff Report and the Washington Post.  In 1965 he won the Overseas Press Award for his reporting in Vietnam.  His books include Lore and Legend of Nepal (1971); The Long Charade: Political Subversion in the Vietnam War (1968); The Golden Bowl Be Broken: Peasant Life in Four Cultures (1973 and 1988); Shahhat: An Egyptian (1978); Villages (1981); Those Days: An American Album (1986); An American Looks at Britain (1990); Tress, Why Do You Wait? (1991); and Villagers (1994).  In 1981 Mr. Critchfield received the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship.  He continued to work as a journalist and author up to his death from a stroke on December 10, 1994. 
 

Richard Critchfield Papers  |  Literary, Music and Theater