Summer Of '49. By David Halberstam. (New York: Avon Books. 1989. Pp. XIV, 319.)
             David Halberstam was born April 10, 1934, in New York, New York. During his childhood, he would go down to the Polo Grounds and watch the Yankees, his heroes, whom he describes in his book. He graduated from Harvard University in 1955, and began his career as a war correspondent and political reporter. For the next ten years Halberstam was a lead reporter for the Daily Times Leader, New York Times, and served as a foreign correspondent in the Congo, Vietnam, Poland, and France. In 1962, The New York Times assigned Halberstam to South Vietnam. It was there that he often wrote controversial articles often questioning the official version of events in the Vietnam War. In 1964, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting and after that, he continued to examine the war in a series of books and magazine articles. Over the years, Halberstam has also won numerous awards for his writing, such as, the George Polk Memorial Award, the Political Book Award and another Pulitzer Prize.
             Throughout his career, David Halberstam has written about a wide range of subjects, ranging from the Japanese auto industry to rowers competing to enter the Olympic games. However, all of his books have dealt with the question of power and of those individuals who are able to influence events in the United States, which some might consider his specialty. In his most well known book, The Powers that Be, Halberstam demonstrates how the media of America helped to shape American politics and society through depictions of the histories of four news-reporting giants. In The Fifties, Halberstam examines the political, historical, and sociological perspective of the decade from 1950 to 1960. Halberstam also writes a lot on the subject of sports, including basketball, rowing and his personal favorite baseball. In October 1964, Halberstam returns to another m...