Taking Up the Torch for a Dead Colleague

There was a touching piece in today's New York Times about the late David Halberstam, and how his work is being continued even after his death. It seems that some of his more famous writing comrades (including Bob Woodward, Sy Hersh and Joan Didion) are going to pitch in and donate their time this autumn in helping to do a book tour for his new, posthumously published book, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War. There's a pleasing symmetry to this story, the Times notes. Many years ago, after his friend, the writer Anthony Lukas, had died, Halberstam had arranged for some writing friends to represent Lukas's book at bookstores around Boston. Shortly after he died this spring in an auto accident, I wrote this tribute to Halberstam. The great one also spoke from beyond the grave in this powerful essay about the Bush White House's use and misuse of history, published in the August issue of Vanity Fair.