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Car crash kills Pulitzer winner

His critical coverage of the Vietnam War influenced public policy.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published April 24, 2007

David Halberstam, 73, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and bestselling author whose critical coverage of the Vietnam War influenced policy and public sentiment in the 1960s and 1970s, died Monday (April 23, 2007) in a car crash south of San Francisco.

Mr. Halberstam, a New York resident, also wrote about the civil rights movement, the automobile industry and sports.

He was on his way to interview former quarterback Y.A. Tittle for a book on the 1958 NFL championship game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants when he was killed in Menlo Park. Three others were injured. The investigation is continuing.

Perhaps the best-known of Mr. Halberstam's books is 1972's The Best and the Brightest, a searing epic of Vietnam-era policy blunders. The book provides revelatory detail on decisions President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson made in the period leading up to the war and thereafter.

In 2005, Warren Bass wrote in the Washington Post's book section: "Most accounts of insider decisionmaking have only limited shelf life, but The Best and the Brightest continues to captivate."

In the early 1960s, Mr. Halberstam covered the Vietnam War for the New York Times, earning a Pulitzer Prize at age 30 in 1964.

Out of that reporting came his 1965 book The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam During the Kennedy Era. The reporting was said to set the standard for a generation of Vietnam-era journalists.

Mr. Halberstam was born April 10, 1934, in New York City to a father who was a surgeon and a mother who was a teacher.

His father was in the military, and Mr. Halberstam moved across the country during his childhood, spending time in Texas, Minnesota and Connecticut.

He attended Harvard University, where he was managing editor of the Harvard Crimson newspaper.

After graduating in 1955, he launched his career at the Daily Times Leader, a small paper in West Point, Miss.

He went on to the Tennessean in Nashville, where he covered the civil rights struggle, and then to the New York Times, which sent him to Vietnam in 1962.

He later said he initially supported U.S. action there but became disillusioned. That was apparent in The Best and the Brightest.

He quit daily journalism in 1967. He then wrote 21 books, covering such topics as Vietnam, civil rights, the auto industry and a baseball pennant race.

Survivors include his wife, Jean Halberstam, of Manhattan, and a daughter, Julia.

Fast Facts:

Noted works

Books by David Halberstam included:

- War in a Time of Peace, 2001.

- Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made, 1999.

- The Fifties, 1993.

- The Powers That Be, 1979.

- The Best and the Brightest, 1972.

[Last modified April 24, 2007, 01:14:28]