David Halberstam and his book about the Vietnam War, “The Best and the Brightest”
David Halberstam (born April 10, 1934, in New York City) is an American journalist and author. His father was a surgeon and his mother a teacher. He was married to Polish-born actress Elzbieta Czyzewska, which led to his expulsion from communist Poland and caused her serious difficulties as well.
Halberstam graduated from Harvard University with a degree in journalism in 1955 and started his career writing for the Daily Times Leader in West Point, Mississippi. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, writing for the Nashville Tennesseean, he covered the beginnings of the American Civil Rights Movement.
In the mid 1960s, Halberstam covered the Vietnam War for the New York Times, where his reporting caused U.S. president John F. Kennedy to request he be transferred to another bureau.[citation needed] At the age of 30, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the war. He is interviewed in the 1968 documentary film on the Vietnam War entitled In the Year of the Pig.
Halberstam put an enormous effort into his book about the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest. Synthesizing material from dozens of books and many dozens of interviews, Halberstam focused on the odd paradox that those who crafted the U.S. war effort in Vietnam were some of the most intelligent, well-connected and self-confident men in America — "the best and the brightest" — and yet those same men were unable to imagine and promote any but a bloody and disastrous course in the Vietnam War.
Thousands of readers began The Best and the Brightest feeling that the U.S. must pursue the war in Vietnam until "victory" was achieved — but became convinced by Halberstam’s book that the U.S. should withdraw from Vietnam [citation needed].
After publication of The Best and the Brightest in 1972, Halberstam plunged right into another "big" book and in 1979 published an informative book about some of the major media outlets in America. The Powers That Be gave compelling profiles of men like William Paley of CBS, Henry Luce of Time Magazine, Phil Graham of The Washington Post — and many others.
Later in his career, Halberstam turned to the subjects of sports, publishing an ambitious book on Michael Jordan in 1999 called Playing for Keeps and on the pennant race battle between the Yankees and Red Sox called Summer of ‘49.
After publishing two books in the 1960s, Halberstam published three books in the 1970s, four books in the 1980’s and six books in the 1990s. He is on pace to publish at least six books this decade.
In 1980, an escaped convict from New York, Bernard C. Welch, Jr., murdered Halberstam’s brother, Michael, a Washington, D.C. cardiologist. Halberstam does not comment publicly about this incident.
Halberstam is currently working on a book about the Korean War. As of 2002, he still lives in New York City.
- (1965) The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy. Random House. ISBN 0-394-45025-6.
- (1965) The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-555092-X.
- (1971) Ho. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-554223-4.
- (1979) The Powers That Be. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-06941-2.
- (1981) The Breaks of the Game. Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-29625-7.
- (1985) The Amateurs: The Story of Four Young Men and Their Quest for an Olympic Gold Medal. Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-449-91003-2.
- (1986) The Reckoning. Avon Books. ISBN 0-380-72147-3.
- (1989) Summer of ‘49. Harper Perennial Modern Classics. ISBN 0-06-088426-6.
- (1991) The Next Century. Random House. ISBN 0-517-09882-2.
- (1994) October 1964. Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-449-98367-6.
- (1999) The Children. Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-449-00439-2.
- (1999) Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made. Broadway Books. ISBN 0-7679-0444-3.
- (2001) War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals. Scribner. ISBN 0-7432-2323-3.
- (2002) Firehouse. ISBN 0-7868-8851-2.
- (2003) The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship. Hyperion. ISBN 0-7868-8867-9.
- (2005) Bill Belichick: The Education of a Coach. Hyperion. ISBN 1-4013-0879-1.
Editorial comment: Halberstam is a great read on the Vietnam War (appropos what is happening in Iraq!) I do hope he still has his radar on politics (as well as sports!)
