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The Best and the Brightest

by David Halberstam

4.21 · rating details · 1,404 ratings · 137 reviews

"A rich, entertaining, and profound reading experience." -- The New York Times
"[The] most comprehensive saga of how America became involved in Vietnam. It is also the Iliad of the American empire and the Odyssey of this nation's search for its idealistic soul. THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST is almost like watching an Alfred Hitchcock thriller." -- The Boston Globe
"Deeply movin...more

Paperback, 720 pages

Published October 26th 1993 by Ballantine Books (first published 1972)

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Dec 14, 2008

Jessica rated it

The Best and the Brightest is an 816-page tome about the men who came to power under Kennedy and continued to serve under Johnson. The men who were supposedly the brightest and most able men ever assembled by a President. The men who led their country into the disastrous Vietnam war.

Halberstam spent over two years interviewing people to write this book and he clearly did his research. His writing shows a clear understanding of the region, history, politics and players. Despite so...moreThe Best and the Brightest is an 816-page tome about the men who came to power under Kennedy and continued to serve under Johnson. The men who were supposedly the brightest and most able men ever assembled by a President. The men who led their country into the disastrous Vietnam war.

Halberstam spent over two years interviewing people to write this book and he clearly did his research. His writing shows a clear understanding of the region, history, politics and players. Despite some repetitive or dry sections, most of the book is surprisingly fast-moving and well written.

In an effort to portray a complete picture of the players, there are a lot of men covered, not all of whom seem critical. I felt I could use an organizational chart or a quick reference section at the end to remember who was who and what their role was.

Though written over 30 years ago, this book’s lessons are still relevant today. Halberstam teaches readers about the restrictions on speaking up against China policy, then Vietnam. He tells of how the officials demanded patriotism, opposing viewpoints were closed off, considered non-patriotic, their proponents excluded from access to power. The lesson is the importance of debate, of being open to information (bad news as well as good), of the difficulty many people have in holding on to their principles when power is at stake.

Perhaps the greatest lesson of the book is that “best and brightest” is a relative term. Even the seemingly most perfect people have flaws that can have disastrous consequences, especially in situations where dissent is discouraged and problems are papered over. And also, that best and the brightest in the 1960s was an exclusive word, limited to ambitious white men, most of whom craved power and were afraid to make mistakes. If the definition of best and brightest had been more inclusive, if different types of intelligent and thoughtful people had been allowed access to decision-making, the results might have been different.

For those interested in how decisions were made from the American side, in how a group of smart men could make such serious mistakes, this is a book worth reading.(less)

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Dec 17, 2009

John rated it

A wonderfully written and engaging history of the war in Vietnam from its origins in the 1940s until 1970.

I have read this book and three other histories (Fitzgerald, Sheehan and Mann) over the last month, and the story is remarkably consistent: the unshakable, implacable arrogance and the impenetrable, willful ignorance of civilian politicans and bureaucrats over the period, as well as the malfeasance of the US military, i.e. institutional loyalities, personal vanities and careeris...more

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Aug 01, 2011

James rated it

The torch was indeed passed-passed from one generation of the wealthy elite to the next.

The book is infinitely enjoyable to a political history junkie like myself. It's impressive in it's coverage of a lot of the most interesting political moments of that time. Sadly, it also helped to drive home a cynical reality I've been avoiding for over twenty years and, for that, I am not grateful. While reading this book current political events compelled me to finally give in to the reality of...moreThe torch was indeed passed-passed from one generation of the wealthy elite to the next.

The book is infinitely enjoyable to a political history junkie like myself. It's impressive in it's coverage of a lot of the most interesting political moments of that time. Sadly, it also helped to drive home a cynical reality I've been avoiding for over twenty years and, for that, I am not grateful. While reading this book current political events compelled me to finally give in to the reality of politics in America which is that, unless you're one of the people from a background similar to the "best and the brightest" reported on in this book, your impact on politics is minimal if indeed you make any impact at all. What I took away from the book was a feeling of cynical remorse for what might have been, for how our political mistakes as a people seem to have taken such a dramatic turn during and after this time period but, also, a feeling that the American public bought into a myth, an idea that seems to have never really existed. The best and the brightest who manned our halls of government were from the same moneyed, upper class, aristocratic families of those who man our halls of government today. The myth, however, was that these then were somehow truly different, that they, as the best and the brightest, heeded what the American public wanted. All we had to do was stay involved. Write our congressmen, our presidents, and keep working. The best and the brightest would act in our best interest and, we assumed, in the world's. We had faith in our government and trusted it. This myth still pervades the politically engaged today. With the internet's vast resources, we get constant information on what our government seems to be doing. We think we are in the halls ourselves. We feel like our leaders are listening to us, that they're reading our comments, our blogs, our status updates and our tweets. They are not. They represent those who helped hoist them into their positions for us to consider them among the best and the brightest.(less)

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Nov 28, 2008

Renee Grogg rated it

A big ole nonfiction book that explains the background behind American involvement in Vietnam. It also gave me a new insight into how decisions are made in Washington by walking you through all the people that were influencing JFK during his presidency. It helped me understand more about the similarities between Vietnam and Iraq.

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Feb 26, 2011

Troy rated it

Put this on the wish list after reading Halberstam's "Coldest Winter", a book which I enjoyed very much, and which taught me a lot.

This one was also very insightful, and like Coldest Winter is focused on the political climate, the people at the top, the psychology of international politics as it boiled down to a personal level for the leaders involved. It's not a history of the Vietnam War, so much as it is a history of the Vietnam White House - through two administrations...morePut this on the wish list after reading Halberstam's "Coldest Winter", a book which I enjoyed very much, and which taught me a lot.

This one was also very insightful, and like Coldest Winter is focused on the political climate, the people at the top, the psychology of international politics as it boiled down to a personal level for the leaders involved. It's not a history of the Vietnam War, so much as it is a history of the Vietnam White House - through two administrations - the Pentagon, and Washington, DC as a whole. I learned a lot about Kennedy and LBJ, and for that, I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

The only reason I didn't rate it as highly as Halberstam's Korea work - Best and the Brightest was written 25-ish years ago, when the where's and why's of Vietnam were both very close and very familiar to the public mind. It has held up well over the years as far as being a documentary of the decisions and the people that made them, BUT, it tends to make some assumptions of familiarity that may have been valid at the time of its writing, but not so much now, or to me, having been born in 1972 and viewing the War through the filter and bitter memories of those who lived it more personally. Halberstam would often try to make a point about someone's personality and decision making process by jumping back and forth through time to illustrative events. This wasn't so bad - but when those events were mentioned in passing as things the typical reader should have been familiar with (but I'm not), I felt like I was missing something. (For example, paraphrasing, while discussing very early events in 1961 - "Years later, after Macnamara had been forced to deal with the attacks on Phet Lam and failure of the XYZ campaign, he would admit that....") For someone who didn't know (yet) about Phet Lam (which I've made up in this example, BTW) or the XYZ campaign, the revelation they would have caused to Macnamara just weren't as clear to me...

For all that - very well written, very educational, I still very much enjoyed it! 4 stars!(less)

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Apr 24, 2010

A.J. Howard rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: finished-in-2010, history

At the very end of his long and thorough work, The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam comments that "the trap was set long before anyone realized it was a trap." This phrase adequately summarizes the main theme of the work. This book isn't designed to give you an understanding of the war in Vietnam. Instead, its an account of extremely decent, brilliant, and well-qualified men slipped into a trap, and how their struggles to break free of this trap only got them more firmly stuck....more

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Nov 14, 2011

Michael rated it

Shelves: nonfiction, history, politics, american-history, vietnam-war

Halberstam's books are always a great read - the man knew how to tell a story with enviable economy, liveliness and clarity. I went into this partly to fill in my knowledge of the Kennedy years as a supplement to reading Caro's LBJ trilogy, and didn't completely realize that this is a full-blown history of the Vietnam conflict from the American side. I also wasn't prepared for the intense anger Halberstam's prose barely contains in places; it's a vivid illustration of the disillusionment that ...more

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Mar 16, 2009

Billy rated it

Shelves: 20th-century-1960s

Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest

In Short: Policymakers “deluded themselves into thinking they could achieve their goals in Vietnam by ignoring, suppressing, or dismissing the information that might have suggested otherwise” In short, they were so committed to their ideals, they could not even conceive of failure in SE Asia. Their arrogance was at fault.

Was the escalation of war in Vietnam foregone by the Kennedy Administration? Two books argue that, no, escalat...moreHalberstam’s The Best and the Brightest

In Short: Policymakers “deluded themselves into thinking they could achieve their goals in Vietnam by ignoring, suppressing, or dismissing the information that might have suggested otherwise” In short, they were so committed to their ideals, they could not even conceive of failure in SE Asia. Their arrogance was at fault.

Was the escalation of war in Vietnam foregone by the Kennedy Administration? Two books argue that, no, escalation was not necessary and that those in the JFK and later LBJ administrations myopically pursued a course of Americanization. David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest illustrates the tragic course of policy-making. To Halberstam, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, and President Lyndon B. Johnson were flawed characters who for various reasons could not decidedly change the course of escalation in Vietnam. Halberstam, who covered the war as a journalist in the 1960s and who earlier supported increasing American intervention in the war, takes a disappointed look back on the men who sent 58,000 American men to die in SE Asia. Each of these cabinet members came from the upper echelons of American society. Most were academically trained and many participated in World War II. Because of their education, these men were confident in their ability to manage a war. McGeorge Bundy and McNamara best exemplify the “best and brightest” mentality of the Vietnam era. Hand picked by Kennedy, these technocrats’ intellectual acumen did not make-up for their scant experience in conducting foreign policy. Their personal character flaws, however, make up most of Halberstam’s critiques. Rusk, for example, was a Secretary of State with little voice in either JFK’s or LBJ’s administration, an affable yes-man who did acquiesced policy-making to McNamara or others. McNamara, on the other hand, was a manager par excellence, but one who repeatedly input faulty data into his calculations on the feasibility of winning in Vietnam. Later released audio tapes from the LBJ’s White House reveal that McNamara’s was less than certain about American victory in the White House. Nevertheless, his loyalty towards JFK transferred to LBJ; his desire to keep power and prestige also hurt McNamara’s objectivity.

Johnson, in particular, was ill suited to deal with the increasingly difficult situation in SE Asia, and for many reasons. First, Johnson was a consummate domestic politician, a virtual master of the senate. He could cajole or bully most congressmen into his position. His folksy southern upbringing lent him an air of authenticity that conflicted with JFK’s New England elitism and made him an outsider as VP in JFKs White House. His folksy demeanor also led LBJ to take Ho Chi Mihn’s threat to American soldiers in the south in a personal manner; something of a direct challenge, or an affront to his manliness. Johnson, while taking a diplomatic tour of Vietnam in the early 1960s (one of many missions JFK sent his older VP on to keep the restless politician away from DC), made comparisons of the Veitnamese to his own down-trodden southern voters. In short, LBJ felt that if the South Vietnamese could experience progress in democracy, or perhaps if LBJ could incubate the region long enough for democracy, he was sure that these people would embrace democracy. All they needed was time and support. Even if others in the administration were hesitant to openly disagree with Johnson’s assessment of Vietnam, the president remained the primary architect of this conflict, lending credence to the title of a modest Michael Hunt book, Lyndon Johnson’s War.
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Dec 06, 2011

Christopher rated it

An incredibly good narrative on how America became so heavily involved in Vietnam. His profiles of the major figures, such as Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, and MacGeorge Bundy, are both enlightening and disheartening. It is disheartening because many of these guys were so smart that they should have (and probably did) know better than to make the decisions they made. I guess the moral that anyone who reads this books should take away is that any president and/or administration that misleads and do...more

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Aug 18, 2011

Chris rated it

I picked this up because it was framed as an analysis on groupthink. Sometimes it is, but the approach is too journalistic for my taste. He offers no general conclusions about the causes of US involvement in Vietnam. He seems to have a separate explanation for every part of the tragedy, though: sometimes it's the Democrat's inability to deal with the aftermath of McCarthyism and "losing" China, sometimes it's personality--Johnson's in particular, sometimes it's other factors. All that ...more

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May 19, 2009

John Hawklyn rated it

Spoiler: My favorite passage is a scene in which a presidential avisor, dispatched to Vietnam meets with a buddhist monk, and endeavors to work with him to resolve the problem of the monks immolating themselves.

After some conversation he mentions to the monk that he feels they've made progress, and that they're working on parallel tracks. Realizing that the idiom might not translate well, he asks the monk whether he was acquainted with the idea. The Monk agrees and replies that ...more

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Nov 23, 2011

Rishi Prakash rated it

I had always heard about the Vietnam War and how USA got their first taste of defeat in any kind of war so it was that curiosity which finally led me to this book. JFK has always had lot of admirers in India and I am also one of them which also pulled me towards this book.This book is the most detailed account of that war: build-up and progress under 3 different Presidents- JFK, Johnshon and then Nixon. The Best and the Brightest is about the men who came to power under Kennedy and continued to ...more

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Sep 22, 2011

Tom rated it

Well, maybe I just didn't manage my expectations. I had wanted to read this book for a long time but I thought it was about the "best and brightest" young men sent to fight in Viet Nam and I knew several who were killed wor wounded. How naive can I be? I really struggled with this. Each character had several pages of biographical info which I found mostly boring (although Rusk was interesting) between which was the "action" as I'll call it. My take way points are as foll...more

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Aug 16, 2011

Larry Bassett rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: political, nonfiction, war, history

The short version of the book: Boys will be boys!

This is a baby boomer book. The idealism of the Kennedy presidency seems very much like the idealism of the Obama campaign and early presidency. Some reviewers have compared how the U.S. got into Vietnam with how we got into Iraq: Congressional action based on misinformation. In both places the ‘enemy’ wears no uniform and blends into the people and the countryside.

Learn about Laos. Maybe you have barely heard of it, let a...more

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Mar 14, 2011

Benjamin Berman rated it

It is amazing how history repeats itself. These quotes from the book could easily be slightly modified to refer to America's recent misadventures in the Middle East and Afghanistan:

"One of the things which surprised me was how thin most of the newspaper and magazine reporting of the period [prior to Kennedy escalation in Vietnam] was, the degree to which journalists accepted the norms of the government"

"We believed in the army, the South Vietnamese did not...more

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Nov 20, 2009

Matt rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: history, audiobooks

I tend not to read modern history, preferring to let the emotions of events die out before I trust authors to analyze and interpret those events more rationally. This was an exception, partly because I like the work that David Halberstam does in other books I've read like The Teammates A Portrait of a Friendship and The Coldest Winter American and the Korean War. The Best and the Brightest is primarily about the decision making and, even more so, the decision makers, that led to our full milit...more

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Aug 21, 2009

Abby rated it

Shelves: nonfiction

Can't remember why I wanted to read this; I might have confused it with A Bright, Shining Lie--two books about Vietnam that have Bright in the title. It's 678 small-print pages; I thought I'd be reading it for months, yet it's compelling. It's largely character driven, and if you're not familiar with the characters, you'll be at something of a loss. I also sensed a smugness on the part of the author that put me off some. The tone is a little odd, yet I could never figure out why I thought that. ...more

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Oct 02, 2009

Bill rated it

Shelves: nonfiction

I bought this book a couple of years ago and finally decided to read it after Robert McNamara's death earlier this year. The Best and the Brightest is a very detailed account of the men behind our nation's involvement in the Vietnam War. Halberstam is especially and justifiably critical of McNamara and Lyndon Johnson. The author makes a pretty convincing case that we actually lost the Vietnam War in 1946.

What I liked most about this book is the way Halberstam shows these men for w...more

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Oct 05, 2007

Louis rated it

Shelves: history

This is a story of hubris. The U.S. presidential administration of John F. Kennedy came to office in 1961 full of promise. In particular, he assembled some of the brightest people from academia and business to advise and guide the country. This book is document who these men were, where the came from, how they were recruited, and the attidudes and hopes they brought with them.

The book covers the building of the Kennedy cabinet thruough their service under Lyndon Johnson. It looks at ...moreThis is a story of hubris. The U.S. presidential administration of John F. Kennedy came to office in 1961 full of promise. In particular, he assembled some of the brightest people from academia and business to advise and guide the country. This book is document who these men were, where the came from, how they were recruited, and the attidudes and hopes they brought with them.

The book covers the building of the Kennedy cabinet thruough their service under Lyndon Johnson. It looks at the Bay of Pigs, but the book builds up to the decisions that lead to the entry of the U.S. into Vietnam and the escalation.

The book is a critique of ability and intlligence over wisdom. While the Kennedy/Johnson administrations were made up of smart and talented people, these were also people who never bore the long term responsibilty for the results of there beliefs nor have they engaged in the down to earth nature of politics with its interaction with people on a base level.

The team had a bit of arrogance, the sense that they knew what was right for the nation and world and they did not have to listen or consult with others. Many of the stories are of the two administrations determining what was right or needed, then determing a different story for Congress and the public that will lead to them getting the resourses for what they had chosen. In the end, the 'reality gap' set in. All the smarts of Kennedy's 'The Best and the Brightest' the analytical skills of John McNamera's 'Whiz kids' really stopped being relavent when they started ignoring the facts on the ground. When the information about the war that they were getting was being ignored in favor of minutea that was considered encouraging, they ignored the results of the new and lauded Systems Analysis and the advice of the old 'Wise Men' of foreign policy. And in the end, their lies caught up to them. The hidden truths, the low-ball cost estimates and the outright deceits that were made in order to build and maintain support both Johnson's Great Society domestic program and the Vietnam foreign policy came to a head as both programs lacked the resources needed to succede, and both failed.

This book is a study in hubris. Of people who were certain of what needed to be done, and how to do it, which included deception and manipulation of the very people they claimed to have been serving. It does a good job of making these people as humans, not monsters as David could have done, but of people of complex motivations, desires to do the right course, but blinded by belief in their own talent and rightousness to take the advice, information, and warnings of others, or even allowing others of talent and wisdom the information they needed to make good decisions themselves. It is a warning of the effect of hubris on power, and probably would be a parallel to History Of The Peloponnesian War. (less)

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Dec 27, 2009

Beau rated it

I came to this book late. Having lived through the Kennedy Administration and the Vietnam War, just a bit too young to understand it all at the time, I kind of feel like I missed something.

I enjoyed the sketches of the people in this book. After about 10 or 11 chapters, there were too many of them. I couldn't keep the people straight. Too much of a good thing?

In hindsight, it would seem that the players are divided into the "good guys" and the "bad guys."...more

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Mar 20, 2010

Jim rated it

A little dense, goes too in depth with some minor players, but overall an interesting view of how the US allowed itself to commit more and more troops to Vietnam. Demonstrates how civilian and military officials who reported that progress was not being made were systematically removed from the chain of command.

Much of it resonates with current US involvement in Afghanistan - and to some extent the Obama administration's attempts to deal with the financial crisis.

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Aug 17, 2011

Gwenyth Crabtree rated it

Chronicle of the decisions leading up to escalation of the war in Vietnam, beginning with JFK's election and ending with Nixon's election. It showed the tragic inevitability of the war, and f our failure, given the Cold-War atmosphere and "the system." Cietnam was a tar baby in that the more we tried to extricate ourselfes the more we stuck ourselves to it. It also shed light on the personalities of the amin players, their histories, etc.

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Jul 12, 2010

Judy rated it

This book was first published in 1972 and has held up quite well over time. It is an examination of the men who were brought into government by President Kennedy and who stayed in government to work with Lyndon Johnson. Unfortunately, these "best and brightest" also worked together to form the policies that gradually drew the United States into the war in Vietnam. A must read for anyone who is involved in developing public policy.

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Mar 03, 2010

Keith rated it

Always wanted to read this book since High school. Took a while. The Good: Great quick background on the key players that led to Vietnam, McCarthyism and its insidious appeal in american politics after the drunk died discredited. Weak Dems bending to Republican party concepts on Foreign Policy (my how so much has changed).

The Bad: Needed to be about 150 pages shorter. Not convinced on a lot of his discussions on the politics of the 60s. As the book Nixonland showed there was b...more

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Oct 14, 2010

David Hirning rated it

As usual, Mr. Halberstam gives us an incredible fly-on-the-wall account of history as it is happening. I don't know how much is conjecture in his books, but the detail is astounding. I expected this book to be solely about the Kennedy Administration, but it's really about how all those smart Kennedy people got us into Vietnam, and how with Johnson we just got deeper and deeper in, until there was no way out. It reads like a newspaper story, in some ways... my one criticism is that there are too ...more

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Jul 31, 2010

Tom Gase rated it

Very powerful book from one of the best non-fiction writers of all time, David Halberstam. It took me a good three weeks to finish this book, but it was worth it. Hard to believe some of the decisions that went into sending many fine young men to die in the Vietnam War. Very well researched; it felt like I was actually living in the 60's at the White House during JFK's and LBJ's tenures as President. A lot of information on JFK, LBJ, Dean Rusk, Bob McNamara, General Taylor and General Westmorela...more

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Mar 25, 2009

Olivia rated it

More than anything else, Halberstam introduces us to the personalities, neuroses, and relationships that drove the U.S. into war in Vietnam.

Each pertinent member of the Kennedy / Johnson administration is given a lengthy psychoanalysis, so at the end of the book, there are few heroes and villains, but each character is fleshed out in all the complexity of their upbringing, their motivations and their decisions.

I left the book with a sense of the overwhelming force of the ...more

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Apr 28, 2008

Leo Jacobowitz rated it

David Halberstam gives a detailed and intimate account of the machinations of the White House Kennedy Administration and its decision during the Vietnam War. Bundy, McNamara, Taylor, Rostow, Johnson and the Kennedys are all vividly displayed in this comprehensive account of decisionmaking during the Vietnam War. Both the Kennedy and Johnson White House were dominated by seasoned political veterans and military strategists who incrementally, tragically, and inexorably suffocated the nation in t...more

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Jun 11, 2011

Cyndi rated it

This book explains those key people involved with the period of US History before and after the Kennedy Administration and Vietnam. In explaining the people and the views we find out why certain decisions were made that led America either into (Vietnam) or away from (Bay of Pigs) war. More interesting to me was why specific people were picked. Sad that not always the best are picked, but Washington is a place where people expect to be remembered after they have helped you. There were many very b...more

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Jun 16, 2009

JRB rated it

· review of another edition

One of the things that strikes me most about this book is how Halberstam rarely questions intentions. He writes off people going against their better judgment as careerism and the 'how it's done' of Washington. You don't come away from The Best and The Brightest thinking these men DID wrong... just that they WERE wrong.

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About David Halberstam

David Halberstam (April 10, 1934–April 23, 2007) was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author known for his early work on the Vietnam War and his later sports journalism.

Halberstam graduated from Harvard University with a degree in journalism in 1955 and started his career writing for the Daily Times Leader in West Point, Mississippi. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, ...moreDavid Halberstam (April 10, 1934–April 23, 2007) was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author known for his early work on the Vietnam War and his later sports journalism.

Halberstam graduated from Harvard University with a degree in journalism in 1955 and started his career writing for the Daily Times Leader in West Point, Mississippi. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, writing for The Tennessean in Nashville, Tennessee, he covered the beginnings of the American Civil Rights Movement.

In the mid 1960s, Halberstam covered the Vietnam War for The New York Times. While there, he gathered material for his book The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era. In 1963, he received a George Polk Award for his reporting at the New York Times. At the age of 30, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the war. He is interviewed in the 1968 documentary film on the Vietnam War entitled In the Year of the Pig.

Halberstam put an enormous effort into his book about Kennedy's foreign policy decisions about the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest. Synthesizing material from dozens of books and many dozens of interviews, Halberstam focused on the odd paradox that those who crafted the U.S. war effort in Vietnam were some of the most intelligent, well-connected and self-confident men in America—"the best and the brightest"—and yet those same men were unable to imagine and promote any but a bloody and disastrous course in the Vietnam War.

Thousands of readers began The Best and the Brightest feeling that the U.S. must pursue the war in Vietnam until "victory" was achieved, but became convinced by Halberstam's book that the U.S. could not win and therefore should withdraw from Vietnam.

After publication of The Best and the Brightest in 1972, Halberstam plunged right into another "big" book and in 1979 published an informative book about some of the major media outlets in America. The Powers That Be gave compelling profiles of men like William Paley of CBS, Henry Luce of Time magazine, Phil Graham of The Washington Post—and many others.

Later in his career, Halberstam turned to the subjects of sports, publishing The Breaks of the Game, an inside look at the Bill Walton and the 1978 Portland Trailblazers basketball team; an ambitious book on Michael Jordan in 1999 called Playing for Keeps; and on the pennant race battle between the Yankees and Red Sox called Summer of '49.

After publishing two books in the 1960s, Halberstam published three books in the 1970s, four books in the 1980s, and six books in the 1990s. He published four books in the 2000s and was on a pace to publish six or more books in that decade before his death. In the wake of 9/11, Halberstam wrote perhaps the most sensitive and insightful book about that tragedy, detailing Engine 40, Ladder 35, in the tome, Firehouse.

In 1980, an escaped convict from New York, Bernard C. Welch, Jr., murdered Halberstam's brother, Michael J. Halberstam, a Washington, D.C. cardiologist.[1] Halberstam refused to comment publicly about this incident.

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The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War

The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/414062.The_Best_and_the_Brightest?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320400003m/414062.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/414062.The_Best_and_the_Brightest?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam[/url]

The Best and the Brightest

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