Robert Modell Shaplen was a correspondent and staff writer for The New Yorker best known for his reporting on Vietnam and Southeast Asia. He was born in Philadelphia in 1917, the son of Joseph Shaplen and Sonia Modell Shaplen. Russian-born Joseph Shaplen reported on the Russian Revolution and after World War I, he moved the Shaplen family to Germany for several years while reporting on events there.
Robert Shaplen graduated from University of Wisconsin in 1937 and earned an advanced degree in journalism from Columbia University in 1938. He completed the degree while also working as a reporter and a rewrite man for the New York Herald Tribune. In 1943 Shaplen left the Herald-Tribune when Newsweek magazine offered him an assignment as a war correspondent. During World War II he covered the Pacific Theatre, participating in fourteen amphibious landings. He also did four reporter-at-large freelance pieces for The New Yorker and 40 broadcasts for NBC. From 1945 to 1947 Shaplen was based in Shanghai as chief of Newsweek's Far Eastern bureau. During the following year Shaplen was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard. Thereafter, he traveled widely as a freelance journalist for Collier's, Sports Illustrated, the New York Post and 15 other newspapers. In addition, a collection of his short stories set in the Far East, A Corner of the World, published during this period, was named one of the outstanding novels of 1949. Shaplen published a similarly-themed second novel, A Forest of Tigers, in 1956.
In 1952 Shaplen became a contributing member of The New Yorker staff, and his interest in crime and scandal resulted in features on Henry Ward Beecher, Ivar Kreuger (the Swedish “match king”), and the McKesson & Robbins financial scandal. Of these, two were republished as books: Free Love and Heavenly Sinners (1954) and Kreuger: Genius and Swindler (1960).
During the 1950s Shaplen's assignments for The New Yorker evolved into a full time position. In 1962 he began writing about Vietnam for the magazine, and in 1964 he established the magazine's permanent Southeast Asian bureau in Hong Kong. In subsequent years, Shaplen most often wrote about Vietnam, but his political coverage extended to virtually every other country in the Far East. Shaplen was highly regarded for his understanding of the complex situation in Vietnam, and he published three books based on his experiences during the war period: The Lost Revolution: the U.S. in Vietnam, 1945-1965; The Road from War, Vietnam, 1965-1970; and Bitter Victory, which concerned his return to Vietnam in 1984. In 1978 Shaplen left Hong Kong and relocated to Princeton, New Jersey, although he continued to travel and report on the Far East for The New Yorker until his death.
Robert Shaplen married Martha Lucas in 1953; and divorced in 1962. Shaplen's second wife, June Herman, whom he married in 1962, died in 1982. In 1984 he married Jayjia Hsia, a researcher for the Educational Testing Service. Robert Shaplen was the father of three children: Peter, Kate, and Jason.
Robert Shaplen died on May 15, 1988. His last article, a piece about China, appeared in The New Yorker several months after his death. In an obituary, the New York Times praised Shaplen as a dedicated correspondent who traveled widely to interview government leaders, economists, and ordinary people for reflective and analytical articles that captured the complexity of Asia's politics and the diversity of its people.
