- published: 23 Apr 2014
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David Halberstam (April 10, 1934 – April 23, 2007) was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, and historian, known for his early work on the Vietnam War, his work on politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, and his later sports journalism.
Halberstam was raised in Yonkers, New York and, earlier, had lived in Winsted, Connecticut (where he was a classmate of Ralph Nader). In 1955, he graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor of arts, and he served as managing editor of The Harvard Crimson.
Halberstam's journalism career began at the Daily Times Leader, the smallest daily newspaper in Mississippi. He covered the beginnings of the American Civil Rights Movement for The Tennessean in Nashville.
Halberstam arrived in Vietnam in the middle of 1962, to be a full-time Vietnam specialist for The New York Times. Halberstam, like many other US journalists covering Vietnam, relied heavily for information on Pham Xuan An, who was later revealed to be a secret North Vietnamese agent. In 1963, Halberstam received a George Polk Award for his reporting at The New York Times, including his eyewitness account of the self-immolation of Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Ðức. During the Buddhist crisis, he and Neil Sheehan debunked the claim by the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem that the Army of the Republic of Vietnam regular forces had perpetrated the Xa Loi Pagoda raids, which the American authorities initially believed, and that instead, the Special Forces loyal to Diem's brother Ngo Dinh Nhu had done so to frame the army generals. He was also involved in a scuffle with Nhu's secret police after they punched fellow journalist Peter Arnett while the pressmen were covering a Buddhist protest. Halberstram left Vietnam in 1964. At the age of 30, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his war reporting. He is interviewed in the 1968 documentary film on the Vietnam War entitled In the Year of the Pig.
Vietnam War and the Presidency: Keynote Speaker
David Halberstam - America Then and Now - 04/27/06
Speaking Freely: David Halberstam
David Halberstam's The Fifties: "The Fear and the Dream" Part 1
David Halberstam's The Fifties: "The Fear and the Dream" Part 2
David Halberstam on Covering War in the Vietnam War
David Halberstam: The Coldest Winter, part one
David Halberstam's The Fifties: "Selling The American Way"
David Halberstam's The Fifties: "The Beat"
David Halberstam's The Fifties: "THE RAGE WITHIN"
David Halberstam's The Fifties: "A Burning Desire"
6/6 David Halberstam's: The Fifties: The Rage Within & The Road to the Sixites
David Halberstam's The Fifties: "Let's Play House"
David Halberstam, 1934-2007