When we lost David Halberstam, we lost the greatest journalist of my lifetime, or perhaps any time. He interviewed, he studied, and he put it down in a historic perspective so brilliant that it was intimidating to anyone else who tried to capture a fraction of time and place in print.
He wrote the ultimate book about Vietnam ("The Best and the Brightest"), he wrote "The Powers That Be," and one can argue that "War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals" was even more extraordinary, with no agenda (he portrayed the senior Bush as one of the great modern foreign policy presidents). "The Breaks of the Game" about Dr. Jack Ramsay, Billy Ray Bates, Bill Walton and the Trail Blazers was a sports classic, as were "Summer of '49" and "Summer of '64" and "The Teammates."
He was an elegant man, dressed nattily in a blazer and bow tie. Yes, he wore them when he was in the third row for Springsteen at Fenway Park, and he wore them to see Little Feat at The Chicken Box on Nantucket. Ever the gentleman. Ever kind.
He fearlessly covered the civil rights movement for a small Mississippi newspaper, and he stood up against the Kennedy administration when he covered Vietnam. To see the small snapshots in the context of the big picture is a rare skill, a skill no one better articulated than David Halberstam.
Peter Gammons
