Don Oberdorfer (1931-2015) worked as a journalist for nearly four decades; twenty-five of those years were as a staff member at the Washington Post, where he served as White House correspondent (1968-1972), Northeast Asia correspondent (1972-1975), and diplomatic correspondent (1976-1993). The collection is mostly composed of Oberdorfer's notebooks that chronicle his assignments with the Post, as well as his work post-retirement. The collection also consists of transcripts of interviews conducted by Oberdorfer with both American and Soviet foreign policy officials for his book The Turn: From the Cold War to a New Era, The United States and the Soviet Union, 1983-1990 (Poseidon Press, 1991, and Touchstone Press, 1992). Additionally, the papers contain a significant amount of research material and writings related to Oberdorfer's career, foreign policy actions taken by the United States and the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, and the political climate of Japan and Korea from the late 1960s into the early twenty-first century.