David Halberstam

Very sad to hear that one of my favorite people in the world, author David Halberstam died today. Halberstam's interests -- baseball, politics and history -- seemed to mirror my own, and I was very much looking forward to his upcoming book about the Korean War due this fall. He was a correspondent for the NY Times during the Vietnam War, alienating the Pentagon with his skeptical reports that called into question overly rosy U.S. assessments of ground conditions there. His work for the Times laid the groundwork for perhaps his best known book, "The Best and the Brightest," a comprehensive tale of failed leadership as American involvement in southeast Asia deepened. He wrote over 20 books, and each one seemed to be better than the one preceding it.