After working as a reporter in California, throughout the U.S. and in Southeast Asia, Langguth left the New York Times in 1965 to write fiction and nonfiction. In the intervening 35 years, he has published three novels and five nonfiction books and also edited a collection of letters by his colleague in the School of Journalism, Norman Corwin.

He published in 2006 a nonfiction narrative of the War of 1812, "Union 1812," and he is working on a nonfiction account of Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears, to be published in 2010.