The writing is good if you take it in short small segments, but I had a hard time getting the flow of the book. Also he seemed to spend time on people who weren't the "young war correspondents" and he seemed to spend time on things that happened outside the early Vietnam timeframe. [...]

"Once Upon a Distant War," is a highly readable history of the various journalists covering America's involvement in the early years (1961-63) of Vietnam. Prochnau has produced an intriguing popular history that has some flaws, but on the whole is quite a good book.

The strength of the book is the fact that the material itself is so fascinating. Saigon, circa 1963, was an extremely exciting place for a foreign journalist. America had begun a huge build-up of forces in South Vietnam, the Diem regime was at its most oppressive, and the Vietcong were making huge gains in the rural countryside. Into this mix were thrown men like David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, Peter Arnett, and Malcolm Brown: relatively young, idealistic reporters who were determined to get the real story. But the US officials in South Vietnam were less than willing to assist the "green" correspondents, who they claimed were not "on the team." Lied to and rebuffed by the official channels, the reporters sought out contacts in the middle of the action: South Vietnamese officers and American field advisors like John Paul Vann who were willing to tell the ugly truth. The result was a constant battle between the Saigon correspondents and the Kennedy administration, other journalists, and even their own publishers. The only people who hated the journalists more were President Diem, his brother Nhu, and most vociferously, South Vietnam's First Lady, Madame Nhu. For two years the correspondents fought for every story and risked everything, including their lives, to get what they believed was the truth about Vietnam out to the American public.

Prochnau is clearly in awe of his protagonists, but I think he still manages to give a fair account. The correspondents are not perfect: Sheehan goofs big time in his early account of My Tho, inflating the body count from 15 to 200. Halberstam was hugely influential, but as Prochnau makes clear, he was also incorrigible, uncompromising, and had a mean temper. One of the most important points that Prochnau stresses is that these men were not anti-war (certainly not at this early stage). Men like Halberstam were ardently anti-communist, and were only angry because the government was lying about a cause that mattered so much. But even the reporters' ostensible adversaries, such as Ambassador Nolting, are given full and fair treatment. (General Harkins is the one exception, but I've never read anything that suggested he was other than incompetent, blind optimist.) In addition to these detailed characterizations, Prochnau adds a wealth of anecdotes that give the book both humor and authenticity. Particularly interesting were the stories of Marguerite Higgins and her Machiavellian ways ("innocent as a cobra"), Sheehan's obsessive 16 year struggle to write "A Bright Shining Lie," and Halberstam mouthing off to high government officials ("Bull..., General! Why are you standing here telling our friend Clurman this bull...?").

My complaints are few. The first is about Prochnau's style: he is eminently readable and well suited for the material, but sometimes his tone becomes so informal it borders on cheesy ("Vietnam was not simply exotic. It was erotic. And narcotic.") My second complaint is that Prochnau glosses over many aspects of the war and does not give a very complete picture of the complex military situation. But his story is about the journalists, so maybe this is an unfair criticism. Then let me leave it as a caveat: do not read this book to gain an in-depth understanding of the political-military situation in South Vietnam, read it to learn about the tribulations of the journalists. In some ways, this book is better suited for people who already understand the history of the era and will not be confused by Prochnau's overly-simplistic (albeit justifiably so) account of the war. That said, this is still quite an entertaining look at some very interesting characters at a crucial juncture in modern American history.

Not long after I finished the book, I read that Jerry Bruckheimer ("Armageddon" and all those big-bucks Hollywood action thrillers) is planning a major movie on it. Not surprising. Prochnau's "Once Upon a Distant War" reads like an adventure novel: a half dozen young war correspondents fighting everybody -- the U.S. govt, the South Vietnamese govt, their own colleagues in the media, even their bosses -- to get the early Vietnam story to the public. It's also first-rate history. You won't learn more about how we got into the mess in Vietnam -- and learn it with such page-turning narrative drama -- anywhere else. I don't know how I missed this the first time around. It's one of the best war books I've read and the best ever about reporters. Don't wait for the movie.

As a big admirer of both Halberstam and Jordan, I got pretty excited last year when I heard that a new book would be coming out. Now after, reading it, I feel a little disappointed by certain weak points, but I'd still recommend it overall, particularly to people who are curious about Jordan and who haven't read much about him before.

First, the bad: The book doesn't have terrifically new insights into Jordan. Perhaps this is to be expected for a celebrity so regularly probed, but I was expecting more in the way of fresh anecdotes, inside stories, etc. Halberstam, to his credit, brings a reassuringly thorough approach to his work, which made me confident that some of the more provocative anecdotes I read had actually happened. Still, at times I felt like I was reading direct excerpts out of previous material I'd read on Jordan, for example his own book "Rare Air." Also, Halberstam's insight into athletes themselves sometimes sounds remarkably one-sided and simple - I'd be curious to learn how many times he uses shopworn phrases like "passion in his eye" and "taking it to another level" in this book.

I shouldn't complain too much, though, because overall, the book possesses many strengths. The structure of the book is a pleasant blend of past and present, almost like a movie in which one starts at the present day, fades back and forth to various moments in the past, and then culminates with the capstone of Jordan's fabulous playing career.

One of the most interesting devices comes near the end, when the author writes a series of paragraphs describing where various figures from Jordan's past were on the night of last year's decisive NBA Finals game. We get into the minds of people like Dean Smith, Dick Ebersol, Buzz Peterson et al. Having met many of these characters through earlier parts of the book, readers are treated to sketches of what these key figures were thinking and doing as they watching Jordan come through once again in the clutch.

Finally, Halberstam does a decent job of analyzing and explaining some of the larger social currents around Jordan, namely involving the sports world and the globalized economy into which it sprang this decade. His multifaceted background as journalist and social historian serve him well as he contextualizes this greatest of twentieth-century athletes. For that I think we can all thank him.

When David Halberstam undertakes any subject, you can be absolutely sure that it will be exhaustively researched. Having read several other books by Mr. Halberstam I can tell you that once again that he maintains his excellent standards. He is more than fair to all parties concerned. Mr. Halberstam takes us to the board rooms, playgrounds, press rooms, restaurants hallways, corridors and offices where things were set in motion.

This book covers so much more than Michael Jordan and the Bulls. He brings to light so many different people and faithfully traces the current sports scene and it's precipators to the source. He does all this in a fascinating manner.

This was compelling reading. He covers angles missed entirely in other sports books. You are introduced to the major and the bit players, who are no less compelling.

If you enjoyed "The Fifties" and "Breaks of the Game" and are a sports fan. If you want to really know things got to where they are now. This is the book to read.

Mr. Halberstam is one of the literary treasures of our time.

This is an enjoyable book. Mr. Halberstam uses MJ as the centerpoint around which he portrays America today. Sports, media, race and labor relations are written about in an enlightening way. There are brilliant partial portraits of the people in MJ's life- Basketball Commissioner David Stern, Spike Lee and the people from Nike, Bull GM Jerry Krause, the coaching staff at North Carolina, Phil Jackson and many more. There are many 'I wish I was there moments,' like the pre-Barcelona Olympic tune up game in Monte Carlo-MJ's team versus Magic Johnson's team- perhaps the greatest basketball game ever. There's a scene before the 1998 playoffs where the Bulls have a team meeting where players just express how they feel about their time on the team. It's a wonderful book, as good as any of Halberstam's books and he's written many excellent books.

This is a fan's book, in every sense of the term. Thanks to his writings about baseball in such unlikely places as the New York Review of Books, and his appearance in Ken Burns' documentary about the sport, Stephen Jay Gould's position as one of the premiere intellectuals who also happens to love baseball will forever be secure; this collection of works will keep that legacy alive for a new generation. Because these writings are generated from Gould's own love of the sport, the focus tends heavily toward the two teams he spent most of his life watching--the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. And that's fine, because no other two teams have encompassed the heights of triumph and tragedy this sport has to offer. For the non-scientist, Gould may get a bit technical at times, such as his explanation of why the .400 hitter is as extinct as the dinosaurs, but even this journalism major managed to wade through it all. A passionate lovesong to the sport from a fan who left his seat too soon.

Stephen Jay Gould grew up in New York City as a Yankees' fan during the late forties and into the fifties, a great time to learn to love the game of baseball. For those of us fortunate to grow up during this era many of Gould's stories are familiar yet entertaining from his point of view. Dusty Rhodes' heroics during the '54 Fall Classic and Don Larsen pitching his way to perfection in '56 are two examples. The only drawback to the book from my point of view is the emphasis on why he feels noone will ever hit .400 anymore. I am not a fan of statistics and charts, and a special section is devoted to figures which I realize entertain many baseball fans, but not this one. I prefer stories, and Stephen Jay Gould has provided a number of them for baseball fans to cuddle up with. It's a shame that his life was cut short in May of 2002 from cancer, but he did provide us with this book in addition to his comments on Ken Burns's video history of baseball a few years ago.

I just read this book and think it's a terrific monument to a great scientist. He will truly be missed, but this book also shows a side of Gould that some of us have never seen before -- the human side. Reading about the perpetual heartache he suffered rooting for the Red Sox (despite the fact that he was a Yankees fan) brings him down off his pedestal and into the bleachers with the rest of us bums. And the depth of intelligence and nuance he brings to the subject of baseball is marvelous to behold. It's a shame that he wasn't alive to see this book published, as it seems the idea was very close to his heart.

By the way, the jacket art -- by Vanity Fair cartoonist Arnold Roth -- is quite frankly one of the best I've ever seen. Check out the guide in the back of the book pointing out the various players depicted. Buckner on the back flap is priceless.

I did want to quibble (gently) with the reviewer below who complains that editorial "updates" about things Gould had mentioned were not included. Whatever his problems with the work done on the book, it looks as though he's somewhat mistaken about that one point; the information about McGwire hitting 70 home runs is in a caption in that chapter, and a coda of sorts to Chuck Knoblauch's season is in a caption, too. (It talks about his dismal performance in the World Series that followed.) So it appears that the editor chose to include whatever information seemed necessary in the book's captions -- and if you're not a reader of captions, I guess those facts are easy to miss. Anyway, personally I didn't find that any more editorial explication than that was needed. I thought it struck a very nice balance, myself.

This is an excellent book for several reasons--it is convenient in that you can quickly read one story and put the book aside without having to go back to get back into the story, it is full of excellent writing, and it gives beautiful glimpses into a very diverse group of sports. The book advertises itself as containing the "best" sports writing of the century and for the most past I would certainly agree, and disagreement has to be expected when you declare something the best, so it is great reading. It is fine journalism, telling captivating stories about people and games, but it is also does an excellent job of showing the importance of sports beyond the fields of play. I would highly recommend the book to sports loves, aspiring journalists, and I would also recommend many of the pieces for people who cannot understand why sports lovers really love sports.

This book is a fascinating look into the personalities of some of America's most cherished sports icons. It does what sports journalism should aspire to do - delve beneath the surface layer of statistics, and show us the heart and soul of the athletes that compete in the American limelight. The dissections of DiMaggio, Ted Williams and Ali are especially insightful, while the coverage of many individual sporting events is gripping, making you feel as if you are actually attending the event. Because this book covers almost every conceivable American sport, it affords the reader the luxury of picking and choosing the stories that may pertain to one's favorite sports.

Splendid writing, on a number of sports related topics. D. Halberstam has put together the best and brightest sports writers and some of their best work.

It is a collection of some of the icons of the field of sports journalism. Some of the writing comes from the glory days, "the golden age" of sports journalism when sports writers concealed the foibles of America's sports heroes. Included are legends like the immortal Grantland Rice, Tom Boswell, Jimmy Breslin, Mike Lupica and Dick Young. Many of these men wrote regularly for the great newspapers of their time; their work spanned decades. They made the best of their craft.

It is an equally stellar work for the characters and the events portrayed. There is a whole section of the book devoted to Muhammad Ali. Norman Mailer's "Ego" and Dick Schaap's contribution "Then and Now" by themselves are worth the price of the book. Fan of Ted Williams? Check out Richard Ben Cramer's contribution. More fond of chess? Look to Barach's "The Day Bobby [Fisher] Blew It".

Some of the best writing ever. Great writing and fantastic subjects. Who could ask for anything more?

Even though the book is very well researched, it is utterly out of date. It was written when many people though that all the Japanese made in industry was correct and every American manager was a bozo. Well, now it is reckoning time for the Japanese. Today, Ford Motor is a very successful company and Nissan Motors is in deep trouble. If the book had been written about GM and Toyota maybe it might still be interesting, but as it stands, it is only history.

I'll start off with the caveat that I believe David Halberstam is America's finest living writer. "The Reckoning" ranks in the middle-tier of Halberstam's body of work, only because it hasn't aged as well as a classic like "The Best and the Brightest."

Halberstam's 'big concept' here is as follows:

Beginning of car industry:

Ford (and U.S.) - Good!

Nissan (and Japan) - Flat on their backs or making scooters, lawnmowers, surviving WWII, etc.
-----

In the 50s and 60s:

Ford / US - Good! (but overconfident, cocky, arrogant)

Nissan (then Datsun) / Japan - Bad (making cars on equivalence with cheap transitor radios)
-----

By mid-80s (the book was published in 86):

Ford (as proxy for US economic model) - Bad! (Hubris brings great fall, etc.)

Nissan (as proxy for Japanese economic model) - Good! (Height of Japanese bubble economy and 'The Japan that Can Say No')
-----

By mid-90s (Book starts to look very dated):

Ford - Ascendant! (tenures of Red Poling, Alex Trotman put Ford back on top)

Nissan - Collapsed! (popping of Japanese bubble economy; Nissan loses touch with consumers, bleeds red ink)
-----

2002 (Book regains its relevancy):

Ford (as proxy for US) - Punch-drunk fighter stumbling around taking an eight-count after brain-dead Jacque Nasser era

Nissan (as proxy for Japan) - Firing on all cylinders worldwide thanks to amazing leadership of Carlos Ghosn
-----

It is worth noting that contrary to Halberstam's premise, Nissan is succeeding *despite* the Japanese model, not because of it. [Ghosn's real success has been his attack against long-held Japanese core principles such as guaranteed lifetime employment.]

What would be great would be a re-release of 'The Reckoning' with about a 75- to 100-page update by Halberstam bringing the events of the last 16 years into focus vis-a-vis the original premise of his 1986 publication.

I work in the automotive industry and I find Halberstam's work to be absolute required reading. The book chronicles the history of the Ford Motor Company and the Nissan Motor Company, comparing and contrasting their vastly different methods for reaching the same goals. In his typical style, Halberstam writes this history like a novel, spinning fascinating stories about Ford Motor Company's infamous union-busting "Service Department" and the effects of American occupation in Japan follwing World War II. Some reviewers have negatively commented on Halberstam's implication that Ford was near death in 1986, but he was right on the money. We have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and know that Ford is once again successful and Nissan was very near complete failure. But, if Ford had not succeeded with the Taurus (which at the time of publication was an unnamed concept) there is a good possiblity the lights in Dearborn may have been turned out forever. An outstanding chronicle of American and Japanese business in the dark days.

"The Year the Dream Died" is probably the best and most comprehensive account yet of the 1968 presidential election. Nineteen sixty-eight was a strange and terrible year in American history, a year in which we endured the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, an escalating war in Vietnam, riots in the cities, the quixotic campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and George Wallace, chaos at the Chicago Democratic convention, and finally Richard Nixon's rise to the presidency.

Witcover is a veteran political reporter, and this book focuses heavily on U.S. politics rather than on the events of the world at large. There's a lot of day-to-day detail on what the candidates did and said, and it sometimes becomes tedious. On the other hand, Witcover pays relatively little attention to other interesting developments around the world, such as the progress of the war in Vietnam, the Prague Spring, the student rebellion in Paris, and popular culture. It was a great and important year for popular music, yet the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and the Rolling Stones get only a very brief mention. Rather than the grand "Revisiting 1968 in America," the book's subtitle should have been something specific to politics, like "Revisiting the 1968 Presidential Election."

Although Witcover provides a generally balanced portrait of each of the men at the center of national politics in 1968, Bobby Kennedy is clearly his favorite, and like so many other commentators, he can't resist speculating about how much better the world might have been if Kennedy had survived and been elected president. On the other hand, McCarthy comes across as an otherworldly pied piper who somehow managed to captivate the nation's youth and a handful of its intellectuals, despite having little interest in campaigning, or indeed in the presidency itself. Humphrey is a bland and ineffectual figure caught in the shadow of Lyndon Johnson, regularly failing to seize opportunities to score political points but somehow coming from far behind Nixon to lose the election by only a small margin. Witcover gives Nixon credit mostly for clever image-making and keeping a lid on his darker side, without really exploring Nixon's broad appeal to the American people.

In the last chapter of the book, Witcover offers a kind of post-mortem on the 1968 election, quoting from interviews with participants across the political spectrum from Tom Hayden to Patrick Buchanan, and from commentators like Arthur Schlesinger, William Bennett, Richard Goodwin and Taylor Branch. It's the best chapter in the book, and should be required reading for any serious student of the 1960's. Its key point is that the 1968 election represented a conservative backlash against the various forces of dissent and disorder that had begun to flourish in America, the beginning of the conservative ascendancy that dominates American politics to this day.

Witcover focuses on the 1968 presidential campaign and in so doing reveals a great deal about American society. This is not a book that goes into American politics with any depth, but it is well-written so that the events he covers come alive. Witcover moves month-by-month through an incredible year selecting key details that hold the reader's attention. Kennedy and McCarthy are the primary focal points in his text for the spring, while Nixon and Humphrey emerge as the focus of the rest of the book, but all the other characters are also there: Nixon, Agnew, Romney, Rockefeller, Reagan and - of course - LBJ. The book climaxes (as does the year) with the Democratic National convention and police riot in Chicago. The details in this section move you from laughter to tears within a few pages - there is that kind of power to Witcover's writing. A weakness in the book is that Martin Luther King, the civil rights, poor people's, and Black power movements are not covered in sufficient depth to be anything other than props for the "real" story. If you are not looking for deep scholarship on American politics and social movements you will find this book enjoyable reading and you will have a hard time putting it down.

You've no doubt heard of that phrase, "Born under a bad sign". Well, how about born in a bad year? That's the circumstances underlying your humble reviewer, but it didn't take Jules Witcover's 1968-The Year The Dream Died, to make me figure that my year was a rotten vintage.

Witcover points to the Kennedy assassination in 1963 as the point where things began to sour. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan, future Senator of New York, then assistant secretary of Labour said in the wake of JFK's death, "We'll laugh again. It's just that we'll never be young again."

That whole disaster of a year that was the third straight year of U.S. involvement in Vietnam was also a presidential election year, during which Democratic disunity and third party candidate George Wallace gave Richard Nixon a new address--1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It also didn't help matters for Hubert Humphrey that his hands were tied in his election bid. He couldn't actively criticize LBJ, who was concentrating on conducting the war.

But the two events that spelled the death of optimism were the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. The latter's death is covered in a chapter aptly titled "Murder of Hope." It figured. The nation still hadn't completely healed after the JFK assassination and the murder of these two figures served to scar the nation even more.

Nixon, Agnew, Johnson, Sirhan Sirhan, and Lt. William Calley were some of the dark forces at work that year, but the most ridiculous by far was General Curtis LeMay, that lunatic who seriously thought of using nukes in Vietnam and embarassed George Wallace, who tapped him to be his running mate without foresight.

My Lai demonstrated how brutally insane the situation in Vietnam had become. How could American soldiers actually contemplate massacring 567 unarmed civilians, when in World War II, they were considered heroes?

Other events covered: the riots in Chicago, the Pueblo incident in North Korea, the Prague Spring, the presidential campaign, and the student protests that inflamed universities.

Each chapter represents a month of that dreadful year, and at the beginning of each chapter is a brief timeline of what else occurred, be they deaths of famous people, e.g. Helen Keller, or opening days of key films e.g. Yellow Submarine.

However, at the end, Witcover argues alternative scenarios. Had RFK lived, he would have taken the Democratic nomination AND the White House, ended Vietnam, and worked with MLK to heal the racial divide in the country. Or if Eugene McCarthy had decided to endorse Hubert Humphrey earlier in the race, Humphrey would have defeated Nixon. All of this and more is soberingly reviewed in a thorough coverage of that fateful year.

This book was less about Ho Chi Minh, and more about why the United States should not fight him. This reader was hoping for a more detailed discussion of Ho's life, his philosophy, etc. This book does over some insights into Ho Chi Minh's character and life, but I was left with the feeling that the book was written for other purposes. The book was originally published in 1970, a year after Ho's death so the book also smacks of the eulogy, glorification of the dead variety.

Ho Chi Minh was, in many ways, a mysterious figure. This book reveals some of those mysteries. But also, his stalinist tendencies which caused the death of many of his fellow countrymen and women. Although a revolutionary, he was a stalinist in many ways. Halberstam is such a brilliant writer though, its worth a read.

Yes I read this. You read. You learn so much. YIf you are like me and you can like this book. I went to see Ho in Hanoi. His body was in Russia for maintenance. This was not informed to me by word of David. Sorry my English. Please visit my country.

Of the half dozen or so photographic books dealing with September 11th, this book is particularly compelling--not just for the photographs (which, of themselves, are gripping and powerful) but also for the comments of the photographers. Along with fire- and policemen and medical personnel, the other people who ran toward the scene of this event (which--along with the assassination of JFK has become a signal date--one when everyone remembers exactly what they were doing at the time) were photographers.

Photographers are the people who use (and need) images to present their impressions of any given experience. What makes this book unique is the accompanying thoughts of those people who captured the moment-to-moment aspects during the horrific attacks on the World Trace Center and after. The images in the aftermath are otherworldly in heart-squeezing fashion: shots of burning wreckage, of inward-looking firefighters, of something as ordinary as a street vendor's cart that looks bewilderingly out of place in the forefront of a scene whose background is a wall of impenetrable black smoke.

This a deeply affecting look, close up, at what so many of us are still attempting to comprehend.

Of all the books on the market concerning the events of September 11th, this book is one of the best I have seen to date. There are over 70 coloured photographs here and a small number of black and white photographs. This quality book shows not only the destruction after the horrific events, but also shows several photographs of the Twin Towers taken over a period of time in years previous to the events of September 11th. "New York September 11" will make a valued keepsake to pass on to future generations as a memorial to those who lost their lives, their families and the courageous rescue workers. There are true-life heros in the world and this book is a fitting tribute to their courage and love for their fellow man. Magnum Photographers have done an excellent job in portraying, in photographs, the unforgettable devestation of September 11, 2001.

It's startling to read the reviews of this book on the heels of having read the reviews for "One Nation," the book put out by Time-Life. It's clear that many people hold some pre-conceived notion about Magnum and are predisposed to panning this book. Well, I know nothing about Magnum. I've heard the name but I couldn't tell you anything about the company. What I can tell you is that I live in New York and I watched this entire thing happen from my window. I now own two books about 9-11 -- One Nation and this -- and for the best accounting of what happened that day,I have to give the edge to Magnum. There are pictures in this book that are exactly what I witnessed that day. I actually prefer that they rely on photographers to tell what they witnessed instead of having upper-crust "experts" put everything into perspective. Also, contrary to what a reviewer in Seattle says, the colors depicted in the Magnum book are accurate. During the day, the sun used to reflect off of the World Trade Center buildings. On that day, it was reflecting off of impossible clouds of smoke -- black and white -- and the eery gray and washed out blue was how it looked and felt here. Also, something this book does that One Nation doesn't do, is supply several pages in the back of the book -- "Farewell to the Towers" -- featuring photos of the Towers as they were. The final picture is of a woman on the Staten Island Ferry, the WTC and New York behind her -- smelling a bouquet of flowers. I like this book. Alot.