David Halberstam

Easton Press David Halberstam books

The Best and The Brightest - 1988
The Next Century - signed first edition - 1991
The Summer of '49 -1996
The Fifties - 2 volume set from Library of American History - 1996
War in a Time of Peace - signed first edition - 2001
The Best and The Brightest - signed modern classic - 2005
Moments: Pulitzer Prize photographs ( writen with Hal Buell ) - 2005

Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War - Library of Military History - 2008

 

Franklin Library David Halberstam books

Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan Biography - signed first edition - 1999

  

David Halberstam biography

David Halberstam, born on April 10, 1934, and tragically killed in a car accident on April 23, 2007, was an acclaimed American journalist and author. Widely regarded as one of the preeminent journalists of the 20th century, Halberstam's investigative reporting and insightful analysis earned him numerous accolades and cemented his legacy in the field of journalism. Born in New York City, Halberstam graduated from Harvard University in 1955 and began his journalistic career as a reporter for the Daily Times Leader in West Point, Mississippi. However, it was during his tenure as a correspondent for The New York Times in the early 1960s that he gained national prominence.

Halberstam rose to prominence for his coverage of the Vietnam War, where he reported on the ground, providing an unvarnished and critical view of the conflict. His courageous reporting, along with fellow journalists like Neil Sheehan and Malcolm Browne, challenged the official narrative and exposed the harsh realities of the war. Halberstam's work earned him the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1964.

Beyond his war reporting, Halberstam delved into various subjects in his extensive body of work. His book The Best and the Brightest (1972) critically examined the decision-making process that led to the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The book is considered a classic in the study of political history and foreign policy. Halberstam's writing spanned a wide range of topics, from sports to civil rights, and he authored best-selling books such as The Powers That Be (1979), which explored the influence of media conglomerates, and The Reckoning (1986), a study of the auto industry. His journalistic approach was marked by thorough research, insightful analysis, and a commitment to truth.

Throughout his career, David Halberstam received numerous awards for his contributions to journalism, including the Peabody Award and the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for courageous journalism. His commitment to journalistic integrity and his ability to dissect complex issues through his writing have left an enduring impact on the field. David Halberstam's tragic death in a car accident in 2007 marked the loss of a journalistic giant, but his work continues to be studied and appreciated for its depth, honesty, and significant contributions to the understanding of contemporary history.

 

The Best and the Brightest

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.

 

The Next Century

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.

Summer of '49

With the airwaves saturated with so much sporting choice, it's hard to imagine how, not that long ago, baseball so completely dominated the landscape and captured imaginations. Given the 1949 season that veteran journalist David Halberstam meticulously recreates, maybe it's not so hard after all. It was a season of great public and personal drama for the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, with the conflict finally resolving itself in a Yankee pennant following a head-to-head showdown on the final day of the season. Each team was led by a star of the highest magnitude: Joe DiMaggio spurred the Yankees despite missing half the season with a foot injury; Ted Williams virtually carried the Sox on his back, missing an unprecedented third Triple Crown by mere decimal points on his batting average. Halberstam focuses much of his narrative on the trials of these two individual sporting giants, adding fine supporting performances by Yogi Berra, Ellis Kinder, Dom DiMaggio, even restaurateur Toots Shoor. Both on and off the field, Halberstam beautifully captures the ethos of a more innocent game that no longer exists, played by heroes far more driven by their pride than by their salaries.

The Fifties

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.

War In a Time of Peace

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.

 

 

Playing for Keeps - Michael Jordan and the World He Made

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.