The best of the brightest
David Halberstam is dead at age 73. He was killed in a car crash in San Francisco.
Crazy that the last time I saw him on TV was when he was on Don Imus' show, talking about the work he put into his Bill Belichick biography.
Perhaps the work of his that most resonates with me is "Firehouse". It's a chronicle of a Manhattan firehoue that sent 13 men to the World Trade Center disaster. Twelve of them died. How did a group that was stationed near Lincoln Center suffer so badly? The way all motor traffic shut down that day, the truck was able to hit a deserted FDR Drive and speed unimpeded to lower Manhattan. Here's the thing about that book that blew me away stylistically. With nearly every character he introduces, he includes how that person reacted to watching the planes hit the towers. Thus through the course of the book, the planes hit the towers again and again and again. It wears you down, but it reminds you of how you spent those September days: watching helplessly as TV stations showed you the planes hitting the towers again and again and again.
All you journalists in the crowd, make sure to write you next piece like a champion.
Crazy that the last time I saw him on TV was when he was on Don Imus' show, talking about the work he put into his Bill Belichick biography.
Perhaps the work of his that most resonates with me is "Firehouse". It's a chronicle of a Manhattan firehoue that sent 13 men to the World Trade Center disaster. Twelve of them died. How did a group that was stationed near Lincoln Center suffer so badly? The way all motor traffic shut down that day, the truck was able to hit a deserted FDR Drive and speed unimpeded to lower Manhattan. Here's the thing about that book that blew me away stylistically. With nearly every character he introduces, he includes how that person reacted to watching the planes hit the towers. Thus through the course of the book, the planes hit the towers again and again and again. It wears you down, but it reminds you of how you spent those September days: watching helplessly as TV stations showed you the planes hitting the towers again and again and again.
All you journalists in the crowd, make sure to write you next piece like a champion.