David Halberstam was killed in a car accident in California Monday morning. Halberstam won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Vietnam War while he worked at the New York Times. He wrote 21 books, including “The Best and the Brightest,” a book that convinced many that the Vietnam War was unwinnable. From Wikipedia:
Halberstam put an enormous effort into his book about Kennedy’s foreign policy decisions about the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest. Synthesizing material from dozens of books and many dozens of interviews, Halberstam focused on the odd paradox that those who crafted the U.S. war effort in Vietnam were some of the most intelligent, well-connected and self-confident men in America—”the best and the brightest”—and yet those same men were unable to imagine and promote any but a bloody and disastrous course in the Vietnam War.
Thousands of readers began The Best and the Brightest feeling that the U.S. must pursue the war in Vietnam until “victory” was achieved, but became convinced by Halberstam’s book that the U.S. could not win and therefore should withdraw from Vietnam.
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Halberstam was the passenger in a car that was struck by another car in Menlo Park. A student from the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkley, was driving the car that was hit. Halberstam had spoken at the school Saturday. He was 73.