David Halberstam has 13 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 14 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 41 ratings. The most-rated is The Best and the Brightest.
The Best and the Brightest
Summary
David Halberstam’s masterpiece, the defining history of the making of the Vietnam tragedy, with a foreword by Senator John McCain. "A rich, entertaining, and profound reading experience.” (The New York Times) Using portraits of America’s flawed policy makers and accounts of the forces that drove them, The Best and the Brightest reckons magnificently with the most important abiding question of our country’s recent history: Why did America become mired in Vietnam, and why did we lose? As the definitive single-volume answer to that question, this enthralling book has never been superseded. It is an American classic. “The most comprehensive saga of how America became involved in Vietnam.... It is also the Iliad of the American empire and the Odyssey of this nation’s search for its idealistic soul. The Best and the Brightest is almost like watching an Alfred Hitchcock thriller.” (The Boston Globe) “Deeply moving... We cannot help but feel the compelling power of this narrative.... Dramatic and tragic, a chain of events overwhelming in their force, a distant war embodying illusions and myths, terror and violence, confusions and courage, blindness, pride, and arrogance.” (Los Angeles Times) “A fascinating tale of folly and self-deception... [An] absorbing, detailed, and devastatingly caustic tale of Washington in the days of the Caesars.” (The Washington Post Book World) “Seductively readable... It is a staggeringly ambitious undertaking that is fully matched by Halberstam’s performance.... This is in all ways an admirable and necessary book.” (Newsweek) “A story every American should read.” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
©2002 David Halberstam (P)2017 Random House Audio
The Breaks of the Game
Summary
More than six years after his death, David Halberstam remains one of this country's most respected journalists and revered authorities on American life and history in the years since WWII. A Pulitzer Prize winner for his groundbreaking reporting on the Vietnam War, Halberstam wrote more than 20 books, almost all of them best sellers. His work has stood the test of time and has become the standard by which all journalists measure themselves. The New York Times best seller, now with a new introduction! The Breaks of the Game focuses on one grim season (1979-80) in the life of the Bill Walton-led Portland Trail Blazers, a team that only three years before had been NBA champions. The tactile authenticity of Halberstam's knowledge of the basketball world is unrivaled. Yet he is writing here about far more than just basketball. This is a story about a place in our society where power, money, and talent collide and sometimes corrupt, a place where both national obsessions and naked greed are exposed. It's about the influence of big media, the fans, and the hype they subsist on, the clash of ethics, the terrible physical demands of modern sports (from drugs to body size), the unreal salaries, the conflicts of race and class, and the consequences of sport converted into mass entertainment and athletes transformed into superstars - all presented in a way that puts the listener in the room and on the court, and The Breaks of the Game in a league of its own.
©2012 David Halberstam (P)2016 Hachette Audio
Playing for Keeps
Summary
New York Times best seller From a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist comes “the best Jordan book so far” (The Washington Post), the story of Michael Jordan’s legendary years with the Chicago Bulls, capped by the 1998 NBA Finals and the team’s second three-peat. From The Breaks of the Game to Summer of '49, David Halberstam has brought the perspective of a great historian, the insider knowledge of a dogged sportswriter, and the love of a fan to bear on some of the most mythic players and teams in the annals of American sports. With Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, he has given himself the greatest challenge and produced his greatest triumph. In Playing for Keeps, David Halberstam takes the first full measure of Michael Jordan's epic career, one of the great American stories of our time. A narrative of astonishing power and human drama, brimming with revealing anecdotes and penetrating insights, the audiobook chronicles the forces in Jordan's life that have shaped him in to history's greatest basketball player and the larger forces that have converged to make him the most famous living human being in the world.
©2012 David Halberstam (P)2018 Random House Audio
The Fifties
Summary
The Fifties is a sweeping social, political, economic, and cultural history of the 10 years that Halberstam regards as seminal in determining what our nation is today. Halberstam offers portraits of not only the titans of the age: Eisenhower, Dulles, Oppenheimer, MacArthur, Hoover, and Nixon; but also of Harley Earl, who put fins on cars; Dick and Mac McDonald and Ray Kroc, who mass-produced the American hamburger; Kemmons Wilson, who placed his Holiday Inns along the nation's roadsides; U-2 pilot Gary Francis Powers; Grace Metalious, who wrote Peyton Place; and "Goody" Pincus, who led the team that invented "the pill". A New York Times best seller
©2012 David Halberstam (P)2018 Random House Audio
The Coldest Winter
Summary
David Halberstam's magisterial and thrilling The Best and the Brightest was the defining book for the Vietnam War. More than three decades later, Halberstam used his unrivalled research and formidable journalistic skills to shed light on another dark corner in our history: the Korean War. The Coldest Winter is a successor to The Best and the Brightest, even though, in historical terms, it precedes it. Halberstam considered The Coldest Winter the best book he ever wrote, the culmination of 45 years of writing about America's postwar foreign policy. Up until now, the Korean War has been the black hole of modern American history. The Coldest Winter changes that. Halberstam gives us a masterful narrative of the political decisions and miscalculations on both sides. He charts the disastrous path that led to the massive entry of Chinese forces near the Yalu, and that caught Douglas MacArthur and his soldiers by surprise. He provides astonishingly vivid and nuanced portraits of all the major figures: Eisenhower, Truman, Acheson, Kim, and Mao, and Generals MacArthur, Almond, and Ridgway. At the same time, Halberstam provides us with his trademark highly evocative narrative journalism, chronicling the crucial battles with reportage of the highest order. At the heart of this audiobook are the individual stories of the soldiers on the front lines who were left to deal with the consequences of the dangerous misjudgments and competing agendas of powerful men. We meet them, follow them, and see some of the most dreadful battles in history through their eyes. As ever, Halberstam was concerned with the extraordinary courage and resolve of people asked to bear an extraordinary burden. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2007 David Halberstam (P)2007 Hyperion
The Education of a Coach
Summary
More than six years after his death, David Halberstam remains one of this country's most respected journalists and revered authorities on American life and history in the years since WWII. A Pulitzer Prize winner for his groundbreaking reporting on the Vietnam War, Halberstam wrote more than 20 books, almost all of them best sellers. His work has stood the test of time and has become the standard by which all journalists measure themselves. Bill Belichick's 31 years in the NFL have been marked by amazing success - most recently with the New England Patriots. In this groundbreaking book, The Education of a Coach, David Halberstam explores the nuances of both the game and the man behind it. He uncovers what makes Bill Belichick tick both on and off the field.
©2012 David Halberstam (P)2015 Hachette Audio
October 1964
Summary
The New York Times best-seller. David Halberstam, an avid sports writer with an investigative reporter’s tenacity, superbly details the end of the 15-year reign of the New York Yankees in October 1964. That October found the Yankees going head-to-head with the St. Louis Cardinals for the World Series pennant. Expertly weaving the narrative threads of both teams’ seasons, Halberstam brings the major personalities on the field - from switch-hitter Mickey Mantle to pitcher Bob Gibson - to life. Using the teams’ subcultures, Halberstam also analyzes the cultural shifts of the '60s. The result is a unique blend of sports writing and cultural history as engrossing as it is insightful. "Compelling.... 1964 is a chronicle of the end of a great dynasty and of a game, like the country, on the cusp of enormous change." (Newsweek) "Wonderful.... Memorable.... Halberstam describes the final game of the 1964 series accurately and so dramatically, I almost thought I had forgotten the ending." (The Washington Post Book World)
©1994 The Amateurs Limited (P)2018 Random House Audio
War in a Time of Peace
Summary
In this long-awaited successor to his #1 best seller The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam describes in fascinating human detail how the shadow of Cold War Vietnam still hangs over American foreign policy, and how domestic politics have determined our role as a world power. Halberstam brilliantly evokes the internecine conflicts, the untrammeled egos, and the struggles for dominance among the key figures in the White House, the State Department, and the military. He shows how the Vietnam War has shaped American politics and policy makers. Perhaps most notable is what happened under Clinton when, for the first time in 50 years, a president placed domestic issues over foreign policy. With his uncanny ability to find the real story behind the headlines, Halberstam shows how current events in the Balkans and Somalia act as a fascinating mirror to American politics and foreign policy. Sweeping in scope and impressive in its depth, War in a Time of Peace provides fascinating portraits of Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Kissinger, James Baker, Dick Cheney, Madeleine Albright, and others to reveal a stunning view of modern political America.
©2001 The Amateurs, Inc (P)2001 Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Firehouse
Summary
"In the firehouse the men not only live and eat with each other, they play sports together, go off to drink together, help repair one another's houses and, most importantly, share terrifying risks; their loyalties to each other must, by the demands of the dangers they face, be instinctive and absolute."
So writes David Halberstam, one of America's most distinguished reporters and historians in this stunning book about Engine 40, Ladder 35 - one of the firehouses hardest hit in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the World Trade towers.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, two rigs carrying 13 men set out from this firehouse, located on the West Side of Manhattan near Lincoln Center; 12 of the men would never return.
Firehouse takes us to the very epicenter of the tragedy. We watch the day unfold, the men called to duty, while their families wait anxiously for news of them. In addition, we come to understand the culture of the firehouse itself, why gifted men do this and why, in so many instances, they are anxious to follow in their fathers' footsteps and serve in so dangerous a profession - why more than anything else, it is not just a job, but a calling as well.
Firehouse is journalism-as-history at its best. The story of what happens when one small institution gets caught in an apocalyptic day, it is a book that will move readers as few others have in our time.
©2004 David Halberstam (P)2004 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
The Next Century
Summary
What can we learn from the events of the 20th century? Journalist and historian David Halberstam set out to answer this question. Halberstam's perceptive The Next Century looks to the future by examining the past. From the rise of the Japanese economy to the startling changes that reshaped the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Halberstam argues that the American economy's survival depends on the rededication and continued education of the American worker. As pertinent in today's economy as it was when first published in 1991, The Next Century is a timeless call to arms, reminding us that we must continually better ourselves in order to compete on the world stage.
©1991 David Halberstam (P)1991, 2016 Dove Audio, Phoenix Books
The Teammates
Summary
More than six years after his death, David Halberstam remains one of this country's most respected journalists and revered authorities on American life and history in the years since WWII. A Pulitzer Prize winner for his groundbreaking reporting on the Vietnam War, Halberstam wrote more than 20 books, almost all of them best sellers. His work has stood the test of time and has become the standard by which all journalists measure themselves. The Teammates is the profoundly moving story of four great baseball players who have made the passage from sports icons - when they were young and seemingly indestructible - to men dealing with the vulnerabilities of growing older. At the core of the audiobook is the friendship of these four very different men - Boston Red Sox teammates Bobby Doerr, Dominic DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and Ted Williams - who remained close for more than 60 years. The book starts out in early October 2001, when Dominic DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky begin a 1,300-mile trip by car to visit their beloved friend, Ted Williams, whom they know is dying. Bobby Doerr, the fourth member of this close group - "my guys", Williams used to call them - is unable to join them. This is a book - filled with historical details and first-hand accounts - about baseball and about something more: the richness of friendship.
©2015 David Halberstam (P)2015 Hachette Audio
The Amateurs
Summary
For the first time in almost 30 years, the United States rowing team has a serious chance to win an Olympic medal in the single sculls when four genuine challengers emerge for the opportunity to represent the U.S. in the 1984 Olympics. They compete fiercely in a sport that holds no promise of financial reward. What drives these men to endure a physical pain known to no other sport? Who are they? Where do they come from? How do they regard themselves and their competitors? What have they sacrificed, and what inner demons have they appeased? Pultizer-Prize winning journalist, David Halberstam takes as his focus the competitors in the 1984 single sculls trials in Princeton - Tiff Wood, John Biglow, Brad Lewis, and Joe Bouscaren - One man will win and gain the right to represent the United States in the 84 Olympiad; the losers will then have to struggle further to gain a place in the two- or four-man boats. And even if they succeed, they will have to live with the bitter knowledge that they were not the best, only close to it.
©1985 David Halberstam (P)1985 Dove Books-On-Tape, Phoenix Books
The Children
Summary
The Children is David Halberstam's brilliant and moving evocation of the early days of the civil rights movement, as seen through the story of the young people - the children - who met in the 1960s and went on to lead the revolution. Magisterial in scope, with a strong you-are-there quality, The Children is a story that one of America's preeminent journalists has waited years to write, a powerful audiobook about one of the most dramatic movements in American history. They came together as part of Reverend James Lawson's workshops on nonviolence, eight idealistic black students whose families had sacrificed much so they could go to college. And they risked it all, and their lives besides, when they joined the growing civil rights movement. David Halberstam shows how Martin Luther King, Jr., recruited Lawson to come to Nashville to train students in Gandhian techniques of nonviolence. We see the strength of the families the children came from, moving portraits of several generations of the black experience in America. We feel Diane Nash's fear before the first sit-in to protest segregation of Nashville lunch counters, and then we see how Diane Nash and others - John Lewis, Gloria Johnson, Bernard Lafayette, Marion Barry, Curtis Murphy, James Bevel, Rodney Powell - persevered until they ultimately accomplished that goal. After the sit-ins, when the Freedom Rides to desegregate interstate buses were in danger of being stopped because of violence, it was these same young people who led the bitter battle into the Deep South. Halberstam takes us into those buses, lets us witness the violence the students encountered in Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma. And he shows what has happened to the children since the 1960s as they have gone on with their lives. The Children bears the trademark qualities that have made David Halberstam one of the leading nonfiction writers of our era. The Children is his most personal work since The Best and the Brightest, a magnificent recreation of a unique period in America and of the lives of the ordinary people whose courage and vision changed history.
©1998 David Halberstam (P)2018 Random House Audio