David Halberstam Books in Order

David Halberstam is a renowned American journalist and historian, celebrated for his in-depth examinations of the Vietnam War, politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, and sports journalism. A Pulitzer Prize winner, he was recognized for his International Reporting in 1964. Halberstam graduated from Harvard University with a degree in journalism in 1955 and embarked on his career as a journalist, initially writing for the Daily Times Leader in West Point, Mississippi. He later covered the nascent stages of the Civil Rights Movement while writing for The Tennessean in Nashville, Tennessee, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the mid-1960s, Halberstam reported on the Vietnam War for The New York Times, gathering material for his book The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era. He received a George Polk Award in 1963 for his reporting at the New York Times and won a Pulitzer Prize at the age of 30 for his coverage of the war. Halberstam's magnum opus, The Best and the Brightest, explores the paradox that those who shaped the US war effort in Vietnam were among the most intelligent, well-connected, and self-assured individuals in America, yet they were also responsible for the failure of US Vietnam policy.