Editor and author, Lansing served as a young man in the United States Navy during World War II, eventually receiving the Purple Heart. Upon leaving the Navy, after the War, he returned in 1946 to North Park College for two years He then went on to Northwestern University, where he studied journalism. Until 1949 he was editor of a weekly newspaper in Illinois. Later he worked as a freelance writer for media such as United Press and Collier's magazine, and later as editor of Time Inc.

But Alfred Lansing is mostly known for having published the bestseller Endurance. Shackleton's Incredible Voyage (1959), a historical account of Sir Ernest Shackleton's trip to Antarctica in 1914. During his exhaustive investigation, the author spoke with ten of the expedition's survivors and had access to the notebooks and personal diaries of eight others , to get a more complete vision of the incredible adventure. In 1960, the author received both the Christopher Award and the Secondary Education Board’s Book Award for this work.