RIP David Halberstam

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - David Halberstam, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who chronicled the Washington press corps, the Vietnam War generation and baseball, was killed in a car crash early Monday, a coroner said. He was 73.

Halberstam, a New Yorker, was a passenger in a car that was broadsided by another vehicle near in Menlo Park, San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault said.

"Looking at the accident and examining him at the scene indicated it's most likely internal injuries," Foucrault said.

Three others were injured.

 

That really, really sucks. One of the biggest reasons I went into journalism was my admiration for his work.

 

What awful news. As someone said before, a giant.

RIP.

 

Halberstam and Vonnegut. Same fucking month. Fuck.

 

God, what a blow.
He spoke at my college, too. After the speech, he hung with us and argued about basketball, Then three of us drove him to the airport and he had trouble getting out of the car. He asked for help with his bag.
"Get it yourself," my friend told him. "You won the fucking Pulitzer prize."
He cracked up.
A great, great man.
RIP

 

Awful, awful news.

 

I'm speechless ...

 

I don't share the godlike awe many people hold for Halberstam, because his sports books were just shot through from cover to cover with egregrious screaming errors, but he was still a hell of a writer, and a very influential one, too.

R.I.P.

 

He must have saved a lot of cab fare through the years.

Once, when he was coming to Nashville after his NBA book came out, I picked him up at the airport.

(He was a Tennessean alumnus.)

I wrote a book review based on our conversation and later heard that he's liked it. Which, for a kid, seemed like a powerful affirmation.

RIP.

 

Great story, F_B.

 

Here's great book that chronicles what he and others went through covering Vietnam: Once Upon a Distant War: David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, Peter Arnett--Young War Correspondents and Their Early Vietnam Battles

 

Not making light, but indeed, the driver of the car he was riding in in the AP story was identified as a grad journalism student at Cal.