David Halberstam (born April 10, 1934), American journalist and author, was born in New York City. The son of a surgeon and a teacher, 13 of his books became best sellers.

Halberstam graduated from Harvard University with a degree in journalism in 1955 and started his career writing for the Daily Times Leader in West Point, Mississippi. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, writing for the Nashville Tennesseean, he covered the beginnings of the civil rights movement.

In the mid 1960s, Halberstam covered the Vietnam War for the New York Times, where his reporting caused U.S. president John F. Kennedy to request he be transferred to another bureau. He won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 1964.

Later in his career, Halberstam turned to the subjects of history and sports.

List of books

  • The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy, 1965
  • The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era, 1965
  • Ho, 1971
  • The Best and the Brightest, 1972
  • The Powers That Be, 1979
  • The Amateurs: The Story of Four Young Men and Their Quest for an Olympic Gold Medal, 1985
  • The Reckoning, 1986
  • Summer of '49, 1989
  • The Next Century, 1991
  • The Fifties, 1993
  • October Nineteen Sixty-Four, 1994
  • Freedom Riders, 1998
  • The Children, 1999
  • Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made, 1999
  • Sports on New York Radio: A Play-By-Play History, 1999
  • War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals, 2001
  • Firehouse, 2002
  • The Teammates, 2003