David Halberstam
Encyclopedia
David Halberstam was an American
Pulitzer Prize
-winning journalist
, author
and historian
, known for his early work on the Vietnam War
, his work on politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, and his later sports journalism
.
(where he was a classmate of Ralph Nader
). In 1955, he graduated from Harvard University
with a bachelor of arts, and he served as managing editor of The Harvard Crimson
.
in Nashville
.
. Halberstam, like many other US journalists covering Vietnam, relied heavily for information on Pham Xuan An, who was later revealed to be a secret North Vietnam
ese agent.
In 1963, Halberstam received a George Polk Award for his reporting at The New York Times
, including his eyewitness
account of the self-immolation
of Vietnamese Buddhist monk
Thích Quảng Ðức. During the Buddhist crisis
, he and Neil Sheehan
debunked the claim by the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem
that the Army of the Republic of Vietnam
regular forces had perpetrated the Xa Loi Pagoda raids
, which the American authorities initially believed, and that instead, the Special Forces loyal to Diem's brother Ngo Dinh Nhu
had done so to frame the army generals. He was also involved in a scuffle
with Nhu's secret police after they punched fellow journalist Peter Arnett
while the pressmen were covering a Buddhist protest. Halberstram left Vietnam in 1964. At the age of 30, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize
for his war reporting. He is interviewed in the 1968 documentary film on the Vietnam War
entitled In the Year of the Pig
.
. In the spring of 1967, he traveled with Martin Luther King Jr. from New York City
to Cleveland and then to Berkeley
for a Harpers
article, "The Second Coming of Martin Luther King." While at the Times, he gathered material for his book The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era.
's foreign policy decisions about the Vietnam War in The Best and the Brightest
. Synthesizing material from dozens of books and many dozens of interviews, Halberstam found what he saw as a strange paradox at the heart of the Vietnam War: that those who crafted the U.S. war effort in Vietnam were some of the most intelligent, best-connected men in America —- "the best and the brightest" -— but that those same brilliant men could not conduct or even imagine anything but a bloody, disastrous course.
In 1972, Halberstam went to work on his next book, The Powers That Be
, published in 1979 and featuring profiles of media titans like William S. Paley
of CBS
, Henry Luce
of Time
magazine and Phil Graham
of The Washington Post
.
In 1980 his brother, cardiologist Michael J. Halberstam
, was murdered during a burglary. Halberstam made his only public comment related to his brother's murder when he and Michael's widow castigated Life
magazine, then published monthly, for paying Michael's killer $9,000 to pose in jail for color photographs that appeared on inside pages of the February 1981 edition of Life.
In 1991, Halberstam wrote The Next Century, in which he argued that, after the end of the Cold War
, the United States was likely to fall behind economically to other countries such as Japan
and Germany
.
, an inside look at Bill Walton
and the 1979-80 Portland Trail Blazers
basketball team; an ambitious book on Michael Jordan
in 1999
called Playing for Keeps; and on the baseball pennant race battle between the New York Yankees
and Boston Red Sox
, called Summer of '49.
In 1997, Halberstam received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy
Award as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colby College
.
. He wrote four books in the 2000s and was working on at least two others at the time of his death. In the wake of the 9/11, Halberstam wrote a book about the attacks, Firehouse, which describes in detail Engine 40, Ladder 35 of the New York City Fire Department
.
The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War
, Halberstam's last book, was published posthumously in September 2007.
near the Dumbarton Bridge
. He was in the area to give a talk at an event at UC Berkeley and was on his way to Mountain View
to interview Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Y.A. Tittle for a book about the 1958
NFL Championship
. Halberstam's driver Kevin Jones, a graduate student at the UC Berkeley Journalism School
who was given the opportunity to drive Halberstam to the interview by the department, pleaded no contest
to misdemeanor
vehicular manslaughter charges. Jones proceeded from a controlled left turn lane on California State Route 84
against opposing traffic and a red light, and his vehicle was then hit broadside on the front passenger side, with fatal consequences for his passenger, Halberstam. Jones was sentenced to five days in jail and 200 hours of community service.
After Halberstam's death, the book project was taken over by Frank Gifford
, who played for the losing New York Giants
in the 1958 championship game, and was published by HarperCollins
in October 2008 with an introduction dedicated to Halberstam.
in baseball, said of Halberstam's assistance: "He provided me with a succinct road map and the proper mind-set." Bryant went on to quote Halberstam on how to tackle a controversial non-fiction subject: "Think about three or four moments that you believe to be the most important during your time frame. Then think about what the leadership did about it. It doesn't have to be complicated. What happened, and what did the leaders do about it? That's your book."
-winning Korean War
correspondent Marguerite Higgins
was the most pro-Diem journalist in the Saigon press corps and she frequently clashed with her younger male colleagues such as Neil Sheehan
, Peter Arnett
and Halberstam. She derided them as "typewriter strategists" who were "seldom at the scenes of battle". She alleged that they had ulterior motives, claiming "Reporters here would like to see us lose the war to prove they're right."
Mark Moyar
, a revisionist historian, claimed that Halberstam, along with fellow Vietnam journalists Neil Sheehan
and Stanley Karnow
, helped to bring about the 1963 South Vietnamese coup
against President Ngo Dinh Diem
by sending negative information on Diem to the U.S. government, in news articles and in private, because they decided Diem was unhelpful in the war effort. Moyar claims that much of this information was false or misleading. Historian Jeremy Kuzmarov disagrees, writing that Moyar's analysis underplays the fact that Diem was a corrupt, brutal and unpopular dictator, who tortured and executed opponents without trial. Kuzmarov says that while Moyar raises some valid criticisms about the methodologies of Halberstam and Sheehan, responsibility for the coup ultimately lies with Washington policymakers. Sheehan, Karnow, and Halberstam all won Pulitzer Prizes for their post-war works on the war.
Newspaper editor Michael Young says Halberstam saw Vietnam as a moralistic tragedy, with America's pride deterministically bringing about its downfall. Young writes that Halberstam reduced everything to human will
, turning his subjects into agents of broader historical forces and coming off like a Hollywood movie with a fated and formulaic climax. Young considers such portrayals of personalities to be both a gift and a flaw.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
and historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
, known for his early work on the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, his work on politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, and his later sports journalism
Sports journalism
Sports journalism is a form of journalism that reports on sports topics and events.While the sports department within some newspapers has been mockingly called the toy department, because sports journalists do not concern themselves with the 'serious' topics covered by the news desk, sports...
.
Early life and education
Halberstam was raised in Yonkers, New York and, earlier, had lived in Winsted, ConnecticutWinsted, Connecticut
Winsted is a census-designated place and an incorporated city in Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States. It is part of the town of Winchester, Connecticut. The population was 7,321 at the 2000 census.-History:...
(where he was a classmate of Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government....
). In 1955, he graduated from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
with a bachelor of arts, and he served as managing editor of The Harvard Crimson
The Harvard Crimson
The Harvard Crimson, the daily student newspaper of Harvard University, was founded in 1873. It is the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is run entirely by Harvard College undergraduates...
.
Career
Halberstam's journalism career began at the Daily Times Leader, the smallest daily newspaper in Mississippi. He covered the beginnings of the American Civil Rights Movement for The TennesseanThe Tennessean
The Tennessean is the principal daily newspaper in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Its circulation area covers 39 counties in Middle Tennessee and eight counties in southern Kentucky....
in Nashville
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
.
Vietnam
Halberstam arrived in Vietnam in the middle of 1962, to be a full-time Vietnam specialist for The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. Halberstam, like many other US journalists covering Vietnam, relied heavily for information on Pham Xuan An, who was later revealed to be a secret North Vietnam
North Vietnam
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam , was a communist state that ruled the northern half of Vietnam from 1954 until 1976 following the Geneva Conference and laid claim to all of Vietnam from 1945 to 1954 during the First Indochina War, during which they controlled pockets of territory throughout...
ese agent.
In 1963, Halberstam received a George Polk Award for his reporting at The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, including his eyewitness
Witness
A witness is someone who has firsthand knowledge about an event, or in the criminal justice systems usually a crime, through his or her senses and can help certify important considerations about the crime or event. A witness who has seen the event first hand is known as an eyewitness...
account of the self-immolation
Self-immolation
Self-immolation refers to setting oneself on fire, often as a form of protest or for the purposes of martyrdom or suicide. It has centuries-long traditions in some cultures, while in modern times it has become a type of radical political protest...
of Vietnamese Buddhist monk
Monk
A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, living either alone or with any number of monks, while always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose...
Thích Quảng Ðức. During the Buddhist crisis
Buddhist crisis
The Buddhist crisis was a period of political and religious tension in South Vietnam from May 1963 to November 1963 characterized by a series of repressive acts by the South Vietnamese government and a campaign of civil resistance, led mainly by Buddhist monks....
, he and Neil Sheehan
Neil Sheehan
Cornelius Mahoney "Neil" Sheehan is an American journalist. As a reporter for The New York Times in 1971, Sheehan obtained the classified Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg. His series in the Times revealed a secret U.S. Department of Defense history of the Vietnam War and resulted in government...
debunked the claim by the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem
Ngo Dinh Diem
Ngô Đình Diệm was the first president of South Vietnam . In the wake of the French withdrawal from Indochina as a result of the 1954 Geneva Accords, Diệm led the effort to create the Republic of Vietnam. Accruing considerable U.S. support due to his staunch anti-Communism, he achieved victory in a...
that the Army of the Republic of Vietnam
Army of the Republic of Vietnam
The Army of the Republic of Viet Nam , sometimes parsimoniously referred to as the South Vietnamese Army , was the land-based military forces of the Republic of Vietnam , which existed from October 26, 1955 until the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975...
regular forces had perpetrated the Xa Loi Pagoda raids
Xa Loi Pagoda raids
The Xa Loi Pagoda raids were a series of synchronized attacks on various Buddhist pagodas in the major cities of South Vietnam shortly after midnight on August 21, 1963...
, which the American authorities initially believed, and that instead, the Special Forces loyal to Diem's brother Ngo Dinh Nhu
Ngo Dinh Nhu
Ngô Ðình Nhu was the younger brother and chief political advisor of South Vietnam's first president, Ngô Ðình Diệm. Nhu was widely regarded as the architect of the Ngô family's nepotistic and autocratic rule over South Vietnam from 1955 to 1963...
had done so to frame the army generals. He was also involved in a scuffle
Double Seven Day scuffle
The Double Seven Day scuffle was a physical altercation on July 7, 1963, in Saigon, South Vietnam. The secret police of Ngô Đình Nhu—the brother of President Ngô Đình Diệm—attacked a group of journalists from the United States who were covering Buddhist protests on the ninth anniversary...
with Nhu's secret police after they punched fellow journalist Peter Arnett
Peter Arnett
Peter Gregg Arnett, ONZM is a New Zealand-American journalist.Arnett worked for National Geographic magazine, and later for various television networks, most notably CNN. He is well known for his coverage of war, including the Vietnam War and the Gulf War...
while the pressmen were covering a Buddhist protest. Halberstram left Vietnam in 1964. At the age of 30, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
for his war reporting. He is interviewed in the 1968 documentary film on the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
entitled In the Year of the Pig
In the Year of the Pig
In the Year of the Pig is a 1968 American documentary film about the origins of the Vietnam War, directed by Emile de Antonio. It was nominated for an Academy award for best documentary....
.
Covers civil rights movement
In the mid-1960s, Halberstam covered the Civil Rights Movement for The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. In the spring of 1967, he traveled with Martin Luther King Jr. from New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
to Cleveland and then to Berkeley
Berkeley
-United Kingdom:* Berkeley, Gloucestershire** Berkeley Castle**Berkeley * Berkeley Square, London* Berkeley Square, Bristol-United States of America:*Berkeley, California, a city in the San Francisco Bay Area...
for a Harpers
Harpers
The Harpers are a fictional and semi-secret organization in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting of the role playing game Dungeons & Dragons...
article, "The Second Coming of Martin Luther King." While at the Times, he gathered material for his book The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era.
Foreign policy, media works
Halberstam next wrote about President John F. KennedyJohn F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
's foreign policy decisions about the Vietnam War in The Best and the Brightest
The Best and the Brightest
The Best and the Brightest is an account by journalist David Halberstam of the origins of the Vietnam War published by Random House. The focus of the book is on the foreign policy crafted by the academics and intellectuals who were in John F...
. Synthesizing material from dozens of books and many dozens of interviews, Halberstam found what he saw as a strange paradox at the heart of the Vietnam War: that those who crafted the U.S. war effort in Vietnam were some of the most intelligent, best-connected men in America —- "the best and the brightest" -— but that those same brilliant men could not conduct or even imagine anything but a bloody, disastrous course.
In 1972, Halberstam went to work on his next book, The Powers That Be
The Powers That Be (book)
The Powers That Be is a 1979 book by David Halberstam about the American media.The subjects in the book:*CBS*The New York Times*The Los Angeles Times*The Washington Post*Time...
, published in 1979 and featuring profiles of media titans like William S. Paley
William S. Paley
William S. Paley was the chief executive who built Columbia Broadcasting System from a small radio network into one of the foremost radio and television network operations in the United States.-Early life:...
of CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
, Henry Luce
Henry Luce
Henry Robinson Luce was an influential American publisher. He launched and closely supervised a stable of magazines that transformed journalism and the reading habits of upscale Americans...
of Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine and Phil Graham
Phil Graham
Philip Leslie Graham was an American publisher and businessman. He was the publisher and co-owner of The Washington Post...
of The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
.
In 1980 his brother, cardiologist Michael J. Halberstam
Michael J. Halberstam
Michael J. "Mike" Halberstam was an American cardiologist and author.-Life and career:He graduated from Harvard in 1953 and from Boston University School of Medicine in 1957...
, was murdered during a burglary. Halberstam made his only public comment related to his brother's murder when he and Michael's widow castigated Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
magazine, then published monthly, for paying Michael's killer $9,000 to pose in jail for color photographs that appeared on inside pages of the February 1981 edition of Life.
In 1991, Halberstam wrote The Next Century, in which he argued that, after the end of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, the United States was likely to fall behind economically to other countries such as Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
Sports writing
Later in his career, Halberstam turned to sports, publishing The Breaks of the GameThe Breaks of the Game
The Breaks of the Game is a 1981 sports book written by Pulitzer Prize winning reporter David Halberstam about the Portland Trail Blazers' 1979–1980 season. The Trail Blazers are a professional basketball team which plays in the National Basketball Association...
, an inside look at Bill Walton
Bill Walton
William Theodore "Bill" Walton III is a retired American basketball player and television sportscaster. The "Big Red-Head", as he was called, achieved superstardom playing for John Wooden's powerhouse UCLA Bruins in the early '70s, winning three straight College Player of the Year Awards, while...
and the 1979-80 Portland Trail Blazers
Portland Trail Blazers
The Portland Trail Blazers, commonly known as the Blazers, are an American professional basketball team based in Portland, Oregon. They play in the Northwest Division of the Western Conference in the National Basketball Association . The Trail Blazers originally played their home games in the...
basketball team; an ambitious book on Michael Jordan
Michael Jordan
Michael Jeffrey Jordan is a former American professional basketball player, active entrepreneur, and majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats...
in 1999
1999 in literature
The year 1999 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*June 19 - Stephen King is hit by a Dodge van while taking a walk. He spends the next three weeks hospitalized...
called Playing for Keeps; and on the baseball pennant race battle between the New York Yankees
New York Yankees
The New York Yankees are a professional baseball team based in the The Bronx, New York. They compete in Major League Baseball in the American League's East Division...
and Boston Red Sox
Boston Red Sox
The Boston Red Sox are a professional baseball team based in Boston, Massachusetts, and a member of Major League Baseball’s American League Eastern Division. Founded in as one of the American League's eight charter franchises, the Red Sox's home ballpark has been Fenway Park since . The "Red Sox"...
, called Summer of '49.
In 1997, Halberstam received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy
Elijah P. Lovejoy
Elijah Parish Lovejoy was an American Presbyterian minister, journalist, newspaper editor and abolitionist. He was murdered by an opposition mob in Alton, Illinois during their attack on his warehouse to destroy his press and abolitionist materials.Lovejoy's father was a Congregational minister...
Award as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colby College
Colby College
Colby College is a private liberal arts college located on Mayflower Hill in Waterville, Maine. Founded in 1813, it is the 12th-oldest independent liberal arts college in the United States...
.
Later years
After publishing four books in the 1960s, including the novel The Noblest Roman, The Making of a Quagmire, and The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy Halberstam wrote three books in the 1970s, four books in the 1980s, and six books in the 1990s, including his 1999 "The Children" which chronicled the 1959-1962 Nashville Student MovementNashville sit-ins
The Nashville sit-ins, which lasted from February 13 to May 10, 1960, were part of a nonviolent direct action campaign to end racial segregation at lunch counters in downtown Nashville, Tennessee...
. He wrote four books in the 2000s and was working on at least two others at the time of his death. In the wake of the 9/11, Halberstam wrote a book about the attacks, Firehouse, which describes in detail Engine 40, Ladder 35 of the New York City Fire Department
New York City Fire Department
The New York City Fire Department or the Fire Department of the City of New York has the responsibility for protecting the citizens and property of New York City's five boroughs from fires and fire hazards, providing emergency medical services, technical rescue as well as providing first response...
.
The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War
The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War
The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War is a book published after the death of the author David Halberstam. The book, written more than half a century after the war, looks at the war from a different perspective than previously written works on the war by various authors.Other books on the...
, Halberstam's last book, was published posthumously in September 2007.
Death
Halberstam died on April 23, 2007 in a traffic accident in Menlo Park, CaliforniaMenlo Park, California
Menlo Park, California is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south; Atherton, North Fair Oaks, and Redwood City...
near the Dumbarton Bridge
Dumbarton Bridge (California)
The Dumbarton Bridge is the southernmost of the highway bridges that span the San Francisco Bay in California. Carrying over 81,000 vehicles daily, it is also the shortest bridge across San Francisco Bay at 1.63 miles...
. He was in the area to give a talk at an event at UC Berkeley and was on his way to Mountain View
Mountain View, California
-Downtown:Mountain View has a pedestrian-friendly downtown centered on Castro Street. The downtown area consists of the seven blocks of Castro Street from the Downtown Mountain View Station transit center in the north to the intersection with El Camino Real in the south...
to interview Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Y.A. Tittle for a book about the 1958
1958 NFL season
The 1958 NFL season was the 39th regular season of the National Football League.The Baltimore Colts defeated the New York Giants, 23–17, in the first sudden-death overtime in an NFL Championship Game...
NFL Championship
NFL Championship Game, 1958
The 1958 National Football League Championship Game was played on December 28, 1958 at Yankee Stadium in New York City. It was the first ever National Football League playoff game to go into sudden death overtime. The final score was Baltimore Colts 23, New York Giants 17. The game has since...
. Halberstam's driver Kevin Jones, a graduate student at the UC Berkeley Journalism School
UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
The UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism is a graduate professional school on the campus of University of California, Berkeley. It is among the top graduate journalism schools in the United States, and is designed to produce journalists with a two-year Master of Journalism degree.The program...
who was given the opportunity to drive Halberstam to the interview by the department, pleaded no contest
Nolo contendere
is a legal term that comes from the Latin for "I do not wish to contend." It is also referred to as a plea of no contest.In criminal trials, and in some common law jurisdictions, it is a plea where the defendant neither admits nor disputes a charge, serving as an alternative to a pleading of...
to misdemeanor
Misdemeanor
A misdemeanor is a "lesser" criminal act in many common law legal systems. Misdemeanors are generally punished much less severely than felonies, but theoretically more so than administrative infractions and regulatory offences...
vehicular manslaughter charges. Jones proceeded from a controlled left turn lane on California State Route 84
California State Route 84
State Route 84 is a split-section California State Highway consisting of two sections. The first section is an east–west arterial road running from San Gregorio to Menlo Park, across the Dumbarton Bridge through Fremont and Newark and ending at I-580 in Livermore. The route overlaps the...
against opposing traffic and a red light, and his vehicle was then hit broadside on the front passenger side, with fatal consequences for his passenger, Halberstam. Jones was sentenced to five days in jail and 200 hours of community service.
After Halberstam's death, the book project was taken over by Frank Gifford
Frank Gifford
Francis Newton "Frank" Gifford is a Hall of Fame former American football player and American sportscaster.-Early life:Gifford was born in Santa Monica, California, the son of Lola Mae and Weldon Gifford, an oil driller....
, who played for the losing New York Giants
New York Giants
The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in East Rutherford, New Jersey, representing the New York City metropolitan area. The Giants are currently members of the Eastern Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League...
in the 1958 championship game, and was published by HarperCollins
HarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
in October 2008 with an introduction dedicated to Halberstam.
Mentor to other authors
Halberstam was generous with his time and advice to other authors. To cite just one instance, author Howard Bryant in the Acknowledgments section of Juicing the Game, his 2005 book about steroidsAnabolic steroid
Anabolic steroids, technically known as anabolic-androgen steroids or colloquially simply as "steroids", are drugs that mimic the effects of testosterone and dihydrotestosterone in the body. They increase protein synthesis within cells, which results in the buildup of cellular tissue ,...
in baseball, said of Halberstam's assistance: "He provided me with a succinct road map and the proper mind-set." Bryant went on to quote Halberstam on how to tackle a controversial non-fiction subject: "Think about three or four moments that you believe to be the most important during your time frame. Then think about what the leadership did about it. It doesn't have to be complicated. What happened, and what did the leaders do about it? That's your book."
Criticism
The Pulitzer PrizePulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
correspondent Marguerite Higgins
Marguerite Higgins
Marguerite Higgins Hall was an American reporter and war correspondent. Higgins covered World War II, the Korean War and the war in Vietnam, and in the process advanced the cause of equal access for female war correspondents.Higgins was born in Hong Kong while her father, Lawrence Higgins, was...
was the most pro-Diem journalist in the Saigon press corps and she frequently clashed with her younger male colleagues such as Neil Sheehan
Neil Sheehan
Cornelius Mahoney "Neil" Sheehan is an American journalist. As a reporter for The New York Times in 1971, Sheehan obtained the classified Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg. His series in the Times revealed a secret U.S. Department of Defense history of the Vietnam War and resulted in government...
, Peter Arnett
Peter Arnett
Peter Gregg Arnett, ONZM is a New Zealand-American journalist.Arnett worked for National Geographic magazine, and later for various television networks, most notably CNN. He is well known for his coverage of war, including the Vietnam War and the Gulf War...
and Halberstam. She derided them as "typewriter strategists" who were "seldom at the scenes of battle". She alleged that they had ulterior motives, claiming "Reporters here would like to see us lose the war to prove they're right."
Mark Moyar
Mark Moyar
Mark Moyar joined as Director of Research in July 2010 after serving as a professor at the Marine Corps University where he held the Kim T. Adamson Chair of Insurgency and Terrorism. Moyar is a self-proclaimed revisionist, known for his writing on the Vietnam War.Moyar holds a B.A. summa cum...
, a revisionist historian, claimed that Halberstam, along with fellow Vietnam journalists Neil Sheehan
Neil Sheehan
Cornelius Mahoney "Neil" Sheehan is an American journalist. As a reporter for The New York Times in 1971, Sheehan obtained the classified Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg. His series in the Times revealed a secret U.S. Department of Defense history of the Vietnam War and resulted in government...
and Stanley Karnow
Stanley Karnow
Stanley Karnow is an American journalist and historian.After serving with the United States Army Air Forces in Asia during World War II, he graduated from Harvard with a bachelor's degree in 1947; in 1947 and 1948 he attended the Sorbonne, and from 1948 to 1949 the Institut d'Études Politiques de...
, helped to bring about the 1963 South Vietnamese coup
1963 South Vietnamese coup
In November 1963, President Ngô Đình Diệm of South Vietnam was deposed by a group of Army of the Republic of Vietnam officers who disagreed with his handling of the Buddhist crisis and, in general, his increasing oppression of national groups in the name of fighting the communist Vietcong.The...
against President Ngo Dinh Diem
Ngo Dinh Diem
Ngô Đình Diệm was the first president of South Vietnam . In the wake of the French withdrawal from Indochina as a result of the 1954 Geneva Accords, Diệm led the effort to create the Republic of Vietnam. Accruing considerable U.S. support due to his staunch anti-Communism, he achieved victory in a...
by sending negative information on Diem to the U.S. government, in news articles and in private, because they decided Diem was unhelpful in the war effort. Moyar claims that much of this information was false or misleading. Historian Jeremy Kuzmarov disagrees, writing that Moyar's analysis underplays the fact that Diem was a corrupt, brutal and unpopular dictator, who tortured and executed opponents without trial. Kuzmarov says that while Moyar raises some valid criticisms about the methodologies of Halberstam and Sheehan, responsibility for the coup ultimately lies with Washington policymakers. Sheehan, Karnow, and Halberstam all won Pulitzer Prizes for their post-war works on the war.
Newspaper editor Michael Young says Halberstam saw Vietnam as a moralistic tragedy, with America's pride deterministically bringing about its downfall. Young writes that Halberstam reduced everything to human will
Will (philosophy)
Will, in philosophical discussions, consonant with a common English usage, refers to a property of the mind, and an attribute of acts intentionally performed. Actions made according to a person's will are called "willing" or "voluntary" and sometimes pejoratively "willful"...
, turning his subjects into agents of broader historical forces and coming off like a Hollywood movie with a fated and formulaic climax. Young considers such portrayals of personalities to be both a gift and a flaw.
Awards and honors
- 2009: Norman Mailer PrizeNorman Mailer PrizeThe Norman Mailer Prize or Mailer Prize is an American literary award established in 2009 by The Norman Mailer Center and The Norman Mailer Writers Colony to celebrate writers and their works...
, Distinguished Journalism - 1964: Pulitzer PrizePulitzer PrizeThe Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
, International Reporting (along with Malcolm W. Browne)
External links
- "The History Boys" Halberstam's final essay, "debunks the Bush administration's wild distortion of history"; Vanity FairVanity Fair (magazine)Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
, August 2007 - "Turning Journalism Into History" Audio and transcript of Halberstam's last public event
- "Letter to My Daughter" by David Halberstam
- The Economist: Obituary
- Blast Magazine: Obituary
- Writing on Air Salon.comSalon.comSalon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
interview - David Halberstam's Hit Streak Continues Powells.com interview
- Booknotes interview with Halberstam on The Fifties, July 11, 1993.
- On C-Span's American Writers series in 2002
- Spring 2000 Commencement Address at the University of Michigan
- Spring 2003 Commencement Address at Tulane University
- Obituary, New York Times
- Appreciations: Halberstam on Journalism, New York Times
- "Nashville Was My Graduate School" -- A 2001 reminiscence by Halberstam of his early career at The Tennessean
- Book Review of Everything They Had at Letters On Pages