David Halberstam

David Halberstam (April 10, 1934 – April 23, 2007) was an American writer, journalist, and historian known for his work on the Vietnam War, politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, Korean War, and later, sports journalism. He won a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1964. Halberstam was killed in a car crash in 2007 while doing research for a book. Halberstam was born in New York City, the son of Blanche (Levy) and Charles A. Halberstam, schoolteacher, and Army surgeon. 

His family was Jewish. He was raised in Winsted, Connecticut, where he was a classmate of Ralph Nader. He moved to Yonkers, New York, and graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1951. In 1955 he graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. degree after serving as managing editor of The Harvard Crimson. Halberstam had a rebellious streak and, as editor of the Harvard Crimson, engaged in a competition to see which columnist could most offend readers.

Halberstam's journalism career began at the Daily Times Leader in West Point, Mississippi, the smallest daily newspaper in Mississippi. He covered the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement for The Tennessean in Nashville. John Lewis later stated that Halberstam was the only journalist in Nashville who would cover the Nashville sit-ins organized by the Nashville Student Movement, which Halberstam focused on in his 1998 book The Children. 

Halberstam's fiery, rebellious streak first came out when covering the civil rights movement as he protested against the lies of the authorities who portrayed the civil rights protesters as violent and dangerous. In August 1961, The New York Times dispatched Halberstam to the Republic of the Congo to report on the Congo Crisis. Although initially eager to cover the events in the country, over time, he grew jaded over the demanding working conditions and the difficulty in handling Congolese officials' lack of truthfulness. In July 1962, he quickly accepted an opportunity to move to Vietnam to report on the Vietnam War for The New York Times.