David Halberstam

"In a grand gesture of reclamation and remembrance, Mr. Halberstam has brought the war back home."--- The New York TimesDavid Halberstam's magisterial and thrilling The Best and the Brightest was the defining book about the Vietnam conflict. More than three decades later, Halberstam used his unrivaled research and formidable journalistic skills to shed light on another pivotal moment in our the Korean War. Halberstam considered The Coldest Winter his most accomplished work, the culmination of forty-five years of writing about America's postwar foreign policy.Halberstam gives us a masterful narrative of the political decisions and miscalculations on both sides. He charts the disastrous path that led to the massive entry of Chinese forces near the Yalu River and that caught Douglas MacArthur and his soldiers by surprise. He provides astonishingly vivid and nuanced portraits of all the major figures--Eisenhower, Truman, Acheson, Kim, and Mao, and Generals MacArthur, Almond, and Ridgway. At the same time, Halberstam provides us with his trademark highly evocative narrative journalism, chronicling the crucial battles with reportage of the highest order. As ever, Halberstam was concerned with the extraordinary courage and resolve of people asked to bear an extraordinary burden.The Coldest Winter is contemporary history in its most literary and luminescent form, providing crucial perspective on every war America has been involved in since. It is a book that Halberstam first decided to write more than thirty years ago and that took him nearly ten years to complete. It stands as a lasting testament to one of the greatest journalists and historians of our time, and to the fighting men whose heroism it chronicles.

The Fifties is a sweeping social, political, economic, and cultural history of the ten years that Halberstam regards as seminal in determining what our nation is today. Halberstam offers portraits of not only the titans of the age: Eisenhower Dulles, Oppenheimer, MacArthur, Hoover, and Nixon, but also of Harley Earl, who put fins on cars; Dick and Mac McDonald and Ray Kroc, who mass-produced the American hamburger; Kemmons Wilson, who placed his Holiday Inns along the nation's roadsides; U-2 pilot Gary Francis Powers; Grace Metalious, who wrote Peyton Place; and "Goody" Pincus, who led the team that invented the Pill.A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The Best and the Brightest is David Halberstam's masterpiece, the defining history of the making of the Vietnam tragedy. Using portraits of America's flawed policy makers and accounts of the forces that drove them, The Best and the Brightest reckons magnificently with the most important abiding question of our country's recent history: Why did America become mired in Vietnam and why did it lose? As the definitive single-volume answer to that question, this enthralling book has never been superseded. It's an American classic.

"Among the best books ever written on professional basketball." The Philadelphia InquirerDavid Halberstam, best-selling author of THE FIFTIES and THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST, turns his keen reporter's eye on the sport of basketball -- the players and the coaches, the long road trips, what happens on court, in front of television cameras, and off-court, where no eyes have followed -- until now.

With incredible skill, passion, and insight, Pulitzer Prize–winningauthor David Halberstam returns us to a glorious time when the dreams of a now almost forgotten America rested on the crack of a bat.The year was 1949, and a war-weary nation turned from the battlefields to the ball fields in search of new heroes. It was a summer that marked the beginning of a sports rivalry unequaled in the annals of athletic competition. The awesome New York Yankees and the indomitable Boston Red Sox were fighting for supremacy of baseball's American League, and an aging Joe DiMaggio and a brash, headstrong hitting phenomenon named Ted Williams led their respective teams in a classic pennant duel of almost mythic proportions—one that would be decided in an explosive head-to-head confrontation on the last day of the season.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist comes “the best Jordan book so far” ( The Washington Post ), the story of Michael Jordan’s legendary years with the Chicago Bulls, capped by the 1998 NBA Finals and the team’s second three-peat.From The Breaks of the Game to Summer of ’49, David Halberstam has brought the perspective of a great historian, the insider knowledge of a dogged sportswriter, and the love of a fan to bear on some of the most mythic players and teams in the annals of American sports. With Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls he has given himself the greatest challenge and produced his greatest triumph.In Playing for Keeps, Halberstam takes the first full measure of Michael Jordan’s epic career, one of the great American stories of our time. A narrative of astonishing power and human drama, brimming with revealing anecdotes and penetrating insights, the book chronicles the forces in Jordan’s life that have shaped him in to history’s greatest basketball player and the larger forces that have converged to make him the most famous living human being in the world.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * THE BEST SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAROctober 1964 should be a hit with old-time baseball fans, who'll relish the opportunity to relive that year's to-die-for World Series, when the dynastic but aging New York Yankees squared off against the upstart St. Louis Cardinals. It should be a hit with younger students of the game, who'll eat up the vivid portrayals of legends like Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris of the Yankees and Bob Gibson and Lou Brock of the Cardinals. Most of all, however, David Halberstam's new book should be a hit with anyone interested in understanding the important interplay between sports and society.--The Boston GlobeCompelling...1964 is a chronicle of the end of a great dynasty and of a game, like the country, on the cusp of enormous change.--NewsweekHalberstam's latest gives us the feeling of actually being there--in another time, in the locker rooms and in the minds of baseball legends. His time and effort researching the book result in a fluency with his topic and a fluidity of writing that make the reading almost effortless....Absorbing.--San Francisco ChronicleWonderful...Memorable...Halberstam describes the final game of the 1964 series accurately and so dramatically, I almost thought I had forgotten the ending.--The Washington Post Book WorldSuperb reporting...Incisive analysis...You know from the start that Halberstam is going to focus on a large human canvas...One of the many joys of this book is the humanity with which Halberstam explores the characters as well as the talents of the players, coaches and managers. These are not demigods of summer but flawed, believable human beings who on occasion can rise to peaks of heroism.--Chicago Sun-Times

More than 6 years after his death David Halberstam remains one of this country's most respected journalists and revered authorities on American life and history in the years since WWII. A Pulitzer Prize-winner for his ground-breaking reporting on the Vietnam War, Halberstam wrote more than 20 books, almost all of them bestsellers. His work has stood the test of time and has become the standard by which all journalists measure themselves.The Teammates is the profoundly moving story of four great baseball players who have made the passage from sports icons--when they were young and seemingly indestructible--to men dealing with the vulnerabilities of growing older. At the core of the book is the friendship of these four very different men--Boston Red Sox teammates Bobby Doerr, Dominic DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and Ted Williams--who remained close for more than sixty years.The book starts out in early October 2001, when Dominic DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky begin a 1,300-mile trip by car to visit their beloved friend Ted Williams, whom they know is dying. Bobby Doerr, the fourth member of this close group--"my guys," Williams used to call them--is unable to join them.This is a book--filled with historical details and first-hand accounts--about baseball and about something the richness of friendship.

Pulitzer Prize-winner David Halberstam's bestseller takes you inside the football genius of Bill Belichick for an insightful profile in leadership. Bill Belichick's thirty-one years in the NFL have been marked by amazing success--most recently with the New England Patriots. In this groundbreaking book, David Halberstam explores the nuances of both the game and the man behind it. He uncovers what makes Bill Belichick tick both on and off the field. "Halberstam does for the three-time Super Bowl winner what Moneyball did for the Oakland A's Billy Beane."-- Best Life "If you want to learn about schooling and allegiance and leadership and, most of all, football, by all means--slip inside the sweatshirt."-- The Wall Street Journal "Halberstam takes the classic sports-bio formula--one stellar performer's rise to the pinnacle of American sport--and transforms it into a nuance-rich story of individual triumph and social history."-- Booklist "In describing the triumph of 'an unadorned man,' a coach without artifice, Halberstam has created a tale of excellence."-- The New York Times Book Review

Award-winning author David Halberstam's The Reckoning gives a riveting account of the most decisive economic confrontation of this century--between Detroit's Ford Motor Company and Japan's Nissan. Here are young Ford, renegade Iacocca, visionary Katayama--everyone needed to reveal the crucial nuances behind two nations competing for commercial supremacy. HC: Morrow.

One of America's most distinguished reporters and historians offers the deeply moving personal story of Engine 40, Ladder 35 -- located on the West Side of Manhattan near Lincoln Center -- and the absolute sacrifice its firefighters made on September 11, 2001.On the morning of September 11, 2001, two rigs carrying thirteen men set out from this twelve of them would never return.Firehouse takes us to the epicenter of the tragedy. Through the kind of intimate portraits that are Halberstam's trademark, we watch the day unfold--the men called to duty while their families wait anxiously for news of them. In addition, we come to understand the culture of the firehouse why gifted men do this; why, in so many instances, they are eager to follow in their fathers' footsteps and serve in so dangerous a profession; and why, more than anything else, it is not just a job, but a calling.This is journalism-as-history at its best, the story of what happens when one small institution gets caught in an apocalyptic day. Firehouse is a book that will move readers as few others have in our time.More than 6 years after his death David Halberstam remains one of this country's most respected journalists and revered authorities on American life and history in the years since WWII. A Pulitzer Prize-winner for his groundbreaking reporting on the Vietnam War, Halberstam wrote more than 20 books, almost all of them bestsellers. His work has stood the test of time and has become the standard by which all journalists measure themselves.

The Children is Halberstam's moving evocation of the early days of the civil rights movement, as seen thru the story of the young people--the Children--who met in the 60s & went on to lead the revolution. Magisterial in scope, with a strong you-are-there quality, The Children is a story one of America's preeminent journalists has waited years to write, a powerful book about one of the most dramatic movements in American history. They came together as part of Rev. James Lawson's workshops on nonviolence, eight idealistic black students whose families had sacrificed much so that they could go to college. They risked it all, & their lives besides, when they joined the growing civil rights movement. Halberstam shows how Martin Luther King Jr recruited Lawson to come to Nashville to train students in Gandhian techniques of nonviolence. We see the strength of the families the Children came from, moving portraits of several generations of the black experience in America. We feel Diane Nash's fear before the first sit-in to protest segregation of Nashville lunch counters. Then we see how Diane Nash & others--John Lewis, Gloria Johnson, Bernard Lafayette, Marion Barry, Curtis Murphy, James Bevel, Rodney Powell--persevered until they ultimately accomplished that goal. After the sit-ins, when the Freedom Rides to desegregate interstate buses were in danger of being stopped because of violence, it was these same young people who led the bitter battle into the Deep South. Halberstam takes us into those buses, lets us witness the violence the students encountered in Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma. He shows what has happened to the Children since the 60s, as they have gone on with their lives.

In The Amateurs, David Halberstam once again displays the unique brand of reportage, both penetrating and supple, that distinguished his bestselling The Best and the Brightest and October 1964. This time he has taken for his subject the dramatic and special world of amateur rowing. While other athletes are earning fortunes in salaries and-or endorsements, the oarsmen gain fame only with each other and strive without any hope of financial reward.What drives these men to endure a physical pain known to no other sport? Who are they? Where do they come from? How do they regard themselves and their competitors? What have they sacrificed, and what inner demons have they appeased? In answering these questions, David Halberstam takes as his focus the 1984 single sculls trials in Princeton. The man who wins will gain the right to represent the United States in the 84 Olympiad; the losers will then have to struggle further to gain a place in the two- or four-man boats. And even if they succeed, they will have to live with the bitter knowledge that they were not the best, only close to it.Informative and compelling, The Amateurs combines the vividness of superb sportswriting with the narrative skills of a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent.

A description and analysis of the media of the time and their effect on politics, events, and the public at large. It focuses particularly on the CBS network, Time Incorporated, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. Along with the media, the discussion covers the people who own and operate the media, particularly these media.

In this successor to his #1 nat'l bestseller "The Best & the Brightest," Halberstam describes in fascinating human detail how the shadow of the Cold War still hangs over American foreign policy & how domestic politics have determined our role as a world power. More than 25 years ago he told the story of the men who conceived & executed the Vietnam War. Now the Pulitzer Prize-winning author has written another chronicle of Washington politics, this time exploring the complex dynamics of foreign policy in post-Cold War America. Halberstam evokes the internecine conflicts, the untrammeled egos & the struggles for dominance among the key figures in the White House, the State Department & the military. He shows how the decisions of men who served in the Vietnam War--such as Gen. Colin Powell & presidential advisers Richard Holbrooke & Anthony Lake--& those who didn't have shaped American politics & policy makers (perhaps most notably, President Clinton's placing, for the 1st time in 50 years, domestic issues over foreign policy). With his ability to find the real story behind the headlines, he shows how current events in the Balkans, Somalia & Haiti reflect American politics & foreign policy. He discusses the repercussions in Washington on policy makers from two different administrations; the wariness of the American military to become caught again in an inconclusive ground war; the frustrations of civilian advisers, most of whom have never served in the military; & the effects these conflicting forces have on the American commander in Kosovo, Gen. Wes Clark. Sweeping & deep, "War in a Time of Peace" provides portraits of Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Kissinger, James Baker, Dick Cheney, Madeleine Albright & others, to reveal modern political America.

The Pulitzer prize-winning newsman's analysis of Kennedy's ideological journey toward increasing radicalism and a personal account of his subsequent successes (and single major defeat) along the campaign trail. Halberstam shows how Kennedy in his role as leader of the honorableopposition in the Democratic party became the caustic critic of the administration's ghetto policies as well as a more cautious critic of its Vietnam policy, placing himself at the exact median point of American idealism and American power. It is a fascinating story of realpolitik (the Kennedy staff wanted Mayor Daley's backing in Chicago) played for radical aims, but Halberstam demonstrates his thesis that Kennedy was the rare politician who surpassed his image. The Kennedy backers were a coalition of old eggheads, youngish radicals (Allard Lowenstein was a major booster and a radicalizer of the candidate), veterans like Larry O'Brien, and--possibly--because he was the first, candidate to visit them and make demands for them--the ghetto residents. Kennedy was a crucial bridge to the New Politics which was, like the country, in transition politically. Halberstam mourns him.

"Sometimes sports mirrors society, sometimes it allows us to understand the larger society a little better. But mostly, it is a world of entertainment of talented and driven young men and women who do certain things with both skill and passion."--David Halberstam David Halberstam was a distinguished journalist and historian of American politics. He was also a sports writer. Everything They Had brings together for the first time his articles from newspapers and magazines, a wide-ranging collection edited by Glenn Stout, selected over the full scope of Halberstam's five decades as one of America's most honored journalists. These are dazzling portraits of some of the most compelling sports figures of our era, the superstars of popular sports like basketball, football, and baseball, but also fishing, soccer, and rowing, and the amateur athletes who play for the love of the game. In "My Dinner with Theodore," Halberstam recounts his long anticipated--and unforgettable--meeting with Red Sox legend Ted Williams. Against the backdrop of 1960s Nashville, he beautifully recounts a lifelong love of football in "How I Fell in Love with the NFL." And "Men Without Women," set on a fishing expedition in Patagonia, is more than a hunt for giant brown trout--it is a story of fishing, friendship, and fellowship. These and many more stories exemplify the breadth and depth of David Halberstam's devotion to diverse sports and his respect and fascination for the men and women who play them so well. The result is an intimate and personal collection that reveals the issues and the ideals David Halberstam cared about--racial equality, friendship, loyalty, and character--and creates a vivid and unforgettable portrait of the author himself. Everything They Had takes its rightful place alongside Halberstam's bestselling sports titles, which include The Breaks of the Game , The Amateurs , Summer of '49 , and The Education of a Coach .

Halberstam's Pultizer-Prize-winning eyewitness account of the most critical political period of American involvement in Vietnam is now designed for classroom use by Daniel J. Singal. Including a new introduction and footnotes describing unfamiliar people and events, this work is lively and accessible for students. With new maps and photographs, students can visualize the crucial political events and increase their understanding of the policy errors of the early 1960s. The Making of a Quagmire captures the story of the Diem/Kennedy era, and the fundamental misconceptions that governed American policy and the South Vietnamese perspective.

Offering a rare Vietnamese perspective, this brief biography focuses on Ho's political development and the power of his personality in enlisting the support of his countrymen. -- (Softcover)

Drawing on his experience as a correspondent for The New York Times in Europe and Vietnam, David Halberstam takes a moment to reflect on the recent past, the astonishing events now taking place in the world, and the look of the next century. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Best and the Brightest and Summer of '49.

This novel about the fear and heat that plague a group of American soldiers awaiting an enemy ambush offers a realistic portrait of the conflict in Vietnam

Four New York Times bestsellers by a “remarkable” Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist capture and celebrate America’s passion for sports (The Seattle Times). Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist David Halberstam, preeminent chronicler of the American experience, focuses his meticulous narrative gifts on some of Major League Baseball’s most iconic moments, training for the Olympics, and a remarkable profile of hoops legend Michael Jordan. Summer of ’49: In this #1 New York Times bestseller, Halberstam brings to stirring life the unforgettable season that cemented baseball as America’s pastime. A nation in transition is gripped by a pennant race for the the Boston Red Sox, led by Ted Williams’s unearthly bat skills, versus the New York Yankees and Joe DiMaggio’s legendary heroics. Every hit on and off the field crackles across the page “in such an enjoyable, interesting, and informative manner that a reader needn’t be a baseball fan to appreciate the book” (Library Journal). October 1964: The 1964 World Series pitted the established Yankees against the upstart St. Louis Cardinals in an epic, seven-game seesaw battle that seemed to reflect the tensions of a nation in turmoil. The barnburner included a cast of legends—Mantle, Maris, Ford, Gibson, Brock—and enough game-changing plays to last a lifetime. Halberstam captures every moment with “a fluidity of writing that make[s] the reading almost effortless. . . . Absorbing” (San Francisco Chronicle). The This inspirational bestseller focuses Halberstam’s brilliant reportage on the travails and triumphs of Olympic rowing. Introducing us to a cast of highly driven athletes at the 1984 single sculls trials in Princeton, Halberstam delves deep into their struggles, motivations, and failures—but in the end only one will represent the United States at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Informative and compelling, Halberstam “maintains the suspense to the very last stroke” (Sports Illustrated). Playing for A wildly entertaining and revealing portrait of global icon Michael Jordan and the rise of the NBA. With his usual impeccable research and gripping storytelling, Halberstam covers the whole court, from the transformative rivalry of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson to the invention of ESPN to Spike Lee’s Nike commercials to every unforgettable playoff game that built Jordan’s legend. “Filled with salty, informed hoops talk” (Publishers Weekly), this “remarkable book . . . [is] a must-read for basketball fans, admirers of Jordan, and anyone who seeks to understand sports in America today” (Bill Bradley).

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