Snow, Edgar (Parks) (1905–1972)

US journalist and author. A lifelong specialist on Chinese affairs, he first went to China as a reporter 1928–40. In his mid-1930s reports, he presented the communist revolutionaries as a popular and potentially victorious force at a time when Western governments were committed to Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists. He provided the West with valuable first-hand information and analysis during China's years of isolation under his friends Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai.

He was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism. In his post-China years, he was a writer and lecturer based in the USA, and, after 1959, in Switzerland. His later books, include The Other Side of the River (1962) and The Long Revolution (1972).