David Halberstam was one of America's most distinguished journalists and historians, a man whose newspaper reporting and books have 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. His last twelve books, starting with The Best and the Brightest and including The Powers That Be, The Reckoning, and The Fifties, have all been national bestsellers. Thirty-eight years after Mr. Halberstam won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting in Vietnam, War in a Time of Peace was the runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize. He died in April 200
Leslie H. Gelb president, Council on Foreign Relations Halberstam's most important book, more ambitious and revealing than "The Best and the Brightest, " in what it tells of politics and decision making in America during the nineties. Just as Vietnam was the test case for our elders, the Balkans and other tragic conflicts became the proving ground for the Bush and Clinton administrations. What Halberstam has written is nothing less than a "War and Peace" for our generation.
Halberstam, the former Vietnam War correspondent and redoubtable historian (The Best and the Brightest), assesses the lasting influence of the Indochina war on U.S. foreign policy. Popular lore has it that the Gulf War, a convincing triumph over a Third World despotism, banished the "Vietnam Syndrome," whose most obvious feature is an extreme reluctance to put American troops at risk for fear of alienating the public. Halberstam demolishes this fiction. Fascinating capsule biographies of Colin Powell, Bill Clinton, and other leaders establish beyond a doubt that the Indochina debacle was the formative event in their lives and continues to shape policy today. Indeed, post-Cold War operations such as the Kosovo campaign seem to have consummated the Vietnam Syndrome witness the spectacle of NATO warplanes delivering their munitions from 15,000 feet for fear of losing allied pilots. This sobering account of the factors that have misshapen U.S. military operations is an ideal companion to the recent memoir by Gen. Wesley Clark, former NATO commander in Kosovo (Waging Modern War, LJ 8/01). An indispensable addition to all public libraries. James R. Holmes, Ph.D. Candidate, Fletcher Sch. of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts Univ., Medford, MA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Leslie H. Gelb president, Council on Foreign Relations Halberstam's most important book, more ambitious and revealing than "The Best and the Brightest, " in what it tells of politics and decision making in America during the nineties. Just as Vietnam was the test case for our elders, the Balkans and other tragic conflicts became the proving ground for the Bush and Clinton administrations. What Halberstam has written is nothing less than a "War and Peace" for our generation.
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