In the Fall of 2001, I discovered David Halberstam at the CSDS library in Delhi. I read his fascinating biography of Ho Chi Minh and then his brilliant account of America’s misadventure in Vietnam, The Making of a Quagmire, a book that added more than a term to our political vocabulary.
This evening, as I heard the news of David Halberstam’s death in a car crash (WAPO and NYT obituaries) in the Bay area, I began to wish we had more of his ilk in Baghdad and Washington. Journalists who raised questions and remained skeptical of facile explanations offered by those in power. Perhaps, David Halberstam did more to bring the American misadventure in Vietnam to light than any other reporter. Surely, his early reporting for the New York Times from Saigon, which fetched him a Pulitzer in 1964, raised more questions about the policies Kennedy-Johnson administrations pursued in Vietnam.
Halberstam didn’t remain a reporter. Instead, he became a chronicler of the biggest stories of the second half of the 20th century. He is rightly praised for his ‘Best and the Brightest‘, but I loved his two books on the fifties: The fifties and The Children. More on these two books soon. I also liked his two other massive works, The Powers that be, on the emergence of NYT, Washington Post, Time and LA Times as media gaints and The Reckoning, a history of automobile industry as told through the stories of Ford and Nissan.
Frankly, I just enjoyed reading everything he wrote.
In between his serious books, Halberstam wrote on sports. His books on Michael Jordan (Playing for Keeps) and Bill Belichick (The Education of a Coach) are among my favorite sports books of all time.
David Halberstam will be missed.
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