A Biography of David Halberstam
David Halberstam (1934–2007) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author. He is best known for both his courageous coverage of the Vietnam War for the New York Times, as well as for his twenty-one nonfiction books—which cover a wide array of topics, from the plight of Detroit and the auto industry to the captivating origins of baseball’s fiercest rivalry. Halberstam wrote for numerous publications throughout his career and, according to journalist George Packer, single-handedly set the standard of “the reporter as fearless truth teller.”
Born in New York City, Halberstam was the second son of Dr. Charles Halberstam, an army surgeon, and Blanche Levy Halberstam, a schoolteacher. Along with his older brother, Michael, Halberstam was raised in Westchester County and went to school in Yonkers. He attended Harvard University, where he was the managing editor of the Crimson, the student-run newspaper. Dedicated to forging a career in journalism, Halberstam worked with the West Point Daily Times Leader in Mississippi after graduation and at the Nashville Tennessean, where he covered the civil rights movement, a year later. Halberstam joined the Washington bureau of the New York Times in 1960. He worked as a Times foreign correspondent, moving to Congo and then to South Vietnam to cover the war in 1962.
Throughout Halberstam’s coverage of the Vietnam War, he was committed to reporting what he saw despite intense and continuous political pressure. Halberstam reported on the corrupt nature of the American-backed government in Saigon. Unlike many of his colleagues, he refused to report the misinformation that American commanders fed to the press, choosing instead to talk to soldiers and sergeants on the frontlines. His steadfast dedication left President Kennedy so infuriated that he personally asked Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, then-publisher of the New York Times, to replace Halberstam. Sulzberger refused.
Halberstam won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Vietnam and worked for the Times’ Warsaw bureau after the war. After leaving the Times in the late sixties, Halberstam turned his focus to writing books and magazine articles. He described his books as stories of power—sometimes used wisely, sometimes disastrously. Halberstam quickly established himself with The Best and the Brightest (1972), a blistering, landmark account of America’s role in Vietnam. For each social or political book he published—such as The Powers That Be, The Fifties, and The Children—Halberstam wrote one on sports, one of his favorite subjects. His books were regularly praised for their impeccable detail as well as for their absorbing narrative style.
Halberstam died in a car accident in Menlo Park, California, in 2007, at the age of seventy-three. He was en route to an interview for an upcoming book about the 1958 National Football League championship game between the New York Giants and the Baltimore Colts. His obituary in the Guardian hailed him as “one of the most talented, influential and prolific of the American journalists who came of age professionally in the 1960s.”
Young Halberstam and his typewriter in the Congo in 1960.
An editorial meeting at the New York Times office, around 1962. Halberstam is at far right; Scotty Reston, who hired Halberstam, is to his right.
Halberstam, shown second from left, walking with military officers in Vietnam, around 1962.
Halberstam with Robert F. Kennedy, around 1967.
Halberstam and his daughter, Julia, at a Fourth of July parade in Nantucket, in 1983.
Halberstam and his friends James T. Wooten (in the poncho), a New York Times and ABC reporter, along with Richard C. Steadman and Gerry Krovatin in Nevis in the early 1990s.
Novelist John Burnham Schwartz (Reservation Road) and Halberstam in Nantucket in the mid-1990s.
Halberstam took an interest in rowing because of his work on The Amateurs, a study of four rowers striving for a place on the US Olympic team, published in 1996.
Halberstam and friends.
Halberstam, second from right, on a New York Times panel. Journalist Dexter Filkins (The Forever War) is to his right, discussing the Iraq war. This is one of the last photos of Halberstam before his death in 2007.
A memorandum written for Halberstam following his fatal car accident in 2007.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Lines from Macbird, by Barbara Garson, published by Grove Press, Inc., are reprinted by permission of Barbara Garson, c/o Marvin Josephson Associates, Inc. Copyright © 1967 by Barbara Garson.
copyright © 1968 by David Halberstam
cover design by Andrea Uva
978-1-4804-0589-9
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