Halberstam (who won the Pulitzer price when he was only thirty years old) was one of the best known American reporters around, a legend who had made name for himself during the 1960's, when reporting on the Vietnam war. He wrote nearly twenty books, mostly on American (foreign) politics, but also on baseball and American football, the civil rights movement in the American south, and the American media.His best known work, The Best and the Brightest (1972), was meant to be a settlement with the disastrous Vietnam era and the American politicians who were responsible for it. Halberstam was the David who beat the Goliaths with this book, but was never forgiven for it. Luckily, he didn't care and continued to write.
Three years ago, while I was in Strand Bookstore in New York City, I bought a paperback copy of his War in a Time of Peace (2001), about American (foreign) politics under Bush sr. and Clinton. I must honestly admit I still haven't finished it, but one can only deeply admire Halberstams way of writing; so thorough and all-embracing, without ever losing the overall picture. Like one critic wrote in a review: a book that most journalists would give their right arm to have written, and I think this applies for his entire oeuvre. If only David Halberstam had written a sequel to War in a Time of Peace, exposing the politicians who form the current Bush administration: he could have crushed them with his paper stone.
