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David Halberstam Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

David Halberstam
Photo by Porter Gifford

David Halberstam

How to pronounce David Halberstam: dayvid HAL-buhr-STAM

David Halberstam Biography

David Halberstam was one of America's most distinguished journalists and historians, a man whose newspaper reporting and books helped define the era we live in. He graduated from Harvard in 1955, took his first job on the smallest daily in Mississippi, and then covered the early civil rights struggle for the Nashville Tennessean. He joined The New York Times in 1960, went overseas almost immediately, first to the Congo and then to Vietnam. His early pessimistic dispatches from Vietnam won him the Pulitzer in 1964 at the age of thirty. Many of his books, including The Best and the Brightest, The Powers That Be, The Reckoning, and The Fifties, have been national bestsellers.

Over the years, he developed a pattern of alternating a book with a weighty theme with one that might seem of slighter import but to which he nonetheless applied his considerable reportorial muscles. “He was a man who didn’t have a lazy bone in his body,” said the writer Gay Talese, a close family friend. Almost invariably, Mr. Halberstam wrote about sports in those alternate books. “They were his entertainments,” his wife said. “They were his way to take a break.”

He was born on April 10, 1934 in New York City.  His father, Dr Charles A Halberstam, was an Army surgeon; his mother, Blanche Levy Halberstam, a schoolteacher. 

After Vietnam and after winning his Pulitzer Prize, Mr. Halberstam was assigned to the Times bureau in Warsaw. There, he met an actress, Elzbieta Czyzewska, whom he married in 1965, but the marriage was short-lived. In 1979, he married Jean Sandness, then a writer. 

He died in a car crash south of San Francisco on April 23, 2007.  The car that he was a passenger in was hit broadside by another car and knocked into a third vehicle.  Mr Halberstam, who lived in Manhattan, was on his way to interview Y.A. Tittle, the former New York Giants quarterback, for a book about the 1958 championship game between the Giants and the Baltimore Colts.

He is survived by his wife and daughter, Julia, who both live in Manhattan.



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Books by this Author

Books by David Halberstam at BookBrowse
The Coldest Winter jacket War In A Time Of Peace jacket Playing For Keeps jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for David Halberstam but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

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    Richard Ben Cramer was born June 12, 1950 in Rochester, New York. He attended Johns Hopkins University earning a bachelor's degree in the Liberal Arts, later going on to earn a masters degree at Columbia University. His ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Playing For Keeps

    Try:
    Joe DiMaggio
    by Richard Ben Cramer

  • Niall Ferguson

    Niall Ferguson

    Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford.

    ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    War In A Time Of Peace

    Try:
    Colossus
    by Niall Ferguson

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