David Halberstam

Very interesting thread. Thank you for the links.

 

Echoing the praise for The Powers That Be. Fascinating look at the media, even today, long after that particular media world changed. Playing For Keeps, about the Jordan Bulls, is a great read as well, nice bookend to Breaks of the Game.

When I first moved to the city and we lived briefly on the Upper West Side, I thought the guy walking toward me was Halberstam. I wanted to say hello and maybe chat but didn't say anything. Still not sure if it was him, but I wish I would have said hello.

 

Thanks for this link. I had not seen that tribute yet and I'm glad I did.

I did not realize he was such a large man. You would not know that looking at pictures of him. I'd see the older bespectacled gentleman on the inside flap of a dust cover and think he was this smallish writer type, not a large man with a deep voice.

 

I would also like to recommend "The Reckoning," about the rise of the Japanese auto industry (specifically Nissan and Toyota) and the decline of the U.S. auto industry (specifically Ford) in the 40 years or so after the end of World War II. I read it a couple years ago while the U.S. auto industry was in a tailspin, and I was struck by how little things had really changed, and how much of this had been looming for almost 30 years.

 

I have very few favorite authors, but Halberstam is one of them. "The Best and the Brightest" is my favorite, but all those mentioned above are great reads. I started the Korean War book during Snowmaggedon in 2010 and never went back to it. I need to finish that and it's time for a re-read of "Breaks of the Game."

I had no idea he was big man. I pictured a slight, 5'8" or so guy.

 

I read "The Fifties" last year. My daughter had to read it as a summer assignment in preparation for her sophomore AP U.S. History class and she hated it, but she's never been one for history.

I enjoyed it for the most part. It got boring at times, and when I was done, I thought that the book simply was one man's interpretation of that stretch of history. Then again, isn't everything truly someone's interpretation of something?

I do plan to read it again sometime down the road.

 

I was just Googling "The Amateurs" because it's been on my must-read list for ages and now I'm inspired to pick it up. While doing so, I found some additional insight. The source is unclear, possibly NYT circa 1985.

"David Halberstam was upset when he watched the 1984 Winter Olympics on television. At what? ''The hype,'' he said... he had been appalled at the commercial exploitation of the Olympics and its competitors...Before the Summer Olympics began in June he would seek out athletes, if he could find any, who went about their sport without an expectation of fame or material reward. He seized upon sculling...He was familiar with the sport because as an undergraduate he had participated in intramural rowing at Harvard University....He found Tiff Wood, the sculler who became the focus of the book, through the Boston phone book...Even a reticent coach, Harry Parker, told all...''All their lives,'' he said, ''they've been waiting to be asked, and here I come.'' In the course of writing a magazine article...he said to himself, ''By God, this has to be a book!''....Mr. Halberstam has resumed rowing, sculling in Nantucket harbor...

 

Great book, as relevant today as the day it was published.

 

And if memory serves, Halberstam writing that book led to a falling-out between he and Gay Talese, who was doing research to write a book on the same subject.