David Halberstam

I wake up to the news that David Halberstam died in a car wreck in California from an email from my colleague Justin Wobbekind. An icon of my age has left us. How tragic. I understand he was working on another book. I hope we see it in print one day.

I remember well his books on Viet Nam especially The Best and the Brightest. This was my first exposure to the truth that our government mislead us about Viet Nam. It was quite shocking at the time in the 60's and early 70's.

There are his sports books. The Summer of '49 is one of my favorite baseball books.

There is his book on Robert F. Kennedy and there is his book The Teammates.

The latter is a poignant story of some of Ted Williams's friends making one last car trip to Florida to see their former Red Sox teammate. The story brought tears to my eyes.

Halberstam wrote many other books. I have read most of them.

Simply put, David Halberstam was one of the greatest writers/journalists and chroniclers of the American experience in my lifetime. He will be missed.