David Halberstam's last column, The History Boys - Politics and Power, is in this month's Vanity Fair magazine. In other news, the student driving him at the time of his death, Kevin Jones, has been charged with vehicular manslaughter. (Previously)
posted by nevercalm on Jul 5, 2007 - 21 comments

David Halbertstam dead in tragic car accident. Experienced, eloquent, and always observant (his dim view of Patrick Ewing being a notable exception), David Halberstam was a journalistic jack-of-all-trades who was probably best known for his stinging indictment of Vietnam warrior Robert McNamara, JFK and LBJ's secretary of defense, in the classic The Best and the Brightest. A superior war correspondent before the era of CNN-televised revolutions , Halberstam was also an excellent historian and sports writer. Halberstam's dense but illuminating The Fifties is an informative and tightly written study on the Eisenhower era. And The Children offers a compelling look at eight young leaders of the Civil Rights Revolution. Moreover, Halberstam's many writings on basketball (The Breaks of the Game, Playing for Keeps) and baseball (Summer of '49, October 1964) rank among the upper echelon of sports books.
posted by psmealey on Apr 23, 2007 - 54 comments