The Best and the Brightest: Kennedy-Johnson Administrations (Modern Library)

by David Halberstam

I cut my base salary, which had been all of about $20,000, to a much smaller retainer. My financial dilemma was fairly typical of that of many a young writer trying to branch out from magazines while doing a major project: how to devote some 80 percent of my energy to one all-consuming project, while making only about 25 or 30 percent of my income from it. Though I did have the retainer from Harper’s, in truth for the first time in my life I was effectively self-employed. The advance from Random House was hardly grand even for those days of more limited advances, and reflected the somewhat limited view of the commercial possibilities inherent in my topic. A book on the origins of the Vietnam War was not considered a hot topic. The total, after commissions, was $41,000, and it was to cover the four projected years of work. It was not a bad sum in those pre-inflation days, but if amortized over four years, it was less than a news clerk at the Times was making. Whatever else I had in mind when I took on the book, it was not money.