About
I was a news reporter, magazine journalist, and contracted writer -- sometimes-ghostwriter -- for government and NGO clients in (DC) the United States before moving to Berlin in 2008.
I first came to Berlin in 1989-90 to report on the "Fall of the Wall" for clients including:
"The Chronicle of Higher Education," "Common Cause," the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and my local newspaper(s).
I've done a lot of writing in Education and History, also on the Arts & Sciences. (for NGOs, I wrote (big) grant proposals, program descriptions, final reports, etc.)
Clients included several museums of the Smithsonian and Smithsonian "Air & Space" magazine, but also Department of the Interior -- National Park Service, Fish & Wildlife, US Department of Education, and the Department of Energy.
In the 1990s, I edited and published (as 'Appalachian Editions') other authors' books
on 20th-century labor history. The book-publishing pretty much ended with Amazon. None of my US titles (from 1990-2015) are in print today, in August 2025.
Today, I'm being most public with my English-language "Berlin Stories," a weekly column, mostly history of Berlin theater, film, literature and art. ( https://toppersherwood.substack.com ). Many of these essays are adapted from my finished-but-still-unpublished nonfiction manuscript:
"The Will to Style: Radical Utopians of the Weimar Bauhaus, 1918-25."
Featured Work
"Just Good Politics: The Life of Raymond Chafin, Appalachian Boss"
" Just Good Politics" is the as-told-to autobiography of Raymond Chafin (1917-2008), the savvy, free-wheeling political “boss” from Logan County, West Virginia, who managed political machinery for the elections of several state governors, U.S. senators, and, in 1960, for John F. Kennedy.
Chafin’s story includes the true account of his role in the historic primary that ended Hubert Humphrey’s bid for the presidency and gave Kennedy the momentum he needed to win the national Democratic nomination. Just as fulfilling is Chafin’s description of political culture in a place where mountain families scraped out difficult lives, where gunfire settled some issues, and where politics was “fist-and-skull.”
Chafin also describes his relationships with other West Virginia politicians, including U.S senators Robert C. Byrd and John D. Rockefeller IV. With disarming candor, Chafin details the behind-the-scenes deals, political maneuvering, and, perhaps most important, the influence of larger bureaucratic interests on elections in the region.
