Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author David Halberstam died Monday in a car crash. He was 73. Halberstam was on his way to an interview with Hall of Fame quarterback Y.A. Tittle for a book on the 1958 NFL championship game when the
car in which he was a passenger was struck by another vehicle in Menlo
Park, Calif., near San Francisco. He was pronounced dead at the scene.Halberstam, the son of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, attended Harvard before beginning work as a journalist in the South, covering the civil rights movement. The New York Times sent Halberstam to Vietnam to cover the war, and he published “The Making of a Quagmire” and “The Best and Brightest” about the Kennedy administration. Halberstam also wrote about the media, the Korean War and major league baseball. Halberstam’s wife, Jean, told The Associated Press that she would remember him most for his “unending, bottomless generosity to young journalists. For someone who obviously was so competitive with himself, the generosity with other writers was incredible.”
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