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"Sometimes sports mirrors society, sometimes it allows us to
understand the larger society a little better. But mostly, it is a world
of entertainment of talented and driven young men and women who do
certain things with both skill and passion."
--David Halberstam
David Halberstam was a distinguished journalist and historian of American politics. He was also a sports writer. Everything They Had
brings together for the first time his articles from newspapers and
magazines, a wide-ranging collection edited by Glenn Stout, selected
over the full scope of Halberstam's five decades as one of America's
most honored journalists. These are dazzling portraits of some of the
most compelling sports figures of our era, the superstars of popular
sports like basketball, football, and baseball, but also fishing,
soccer, and rowing, and the amateur athletes who play for the love of
the game.
In "My Dinner with Theodore," Halberstam recounts his long
anticipated--and unforgettable--meeting with Red Sox legend Ted
Williams. Against the backdrop of 1960s Nashville, he beautifully
recounts a lifelong love of football in "How I Fell in Love with the
NFL." And "Men Without Women," set on a fishing expedition in Patagonia,
is more than a hunt for giant brown trout--it is a story of fishing,
friendship, and fellowship. These and many more stories exemplify the
breadth and depth of David Halberstam's devotion to diverse sports and
his respect and fascination for the men and women who play them so well.
The result is an intimate and personal collection that reveals the
issues and the ideals David Halberstam cared about--racial equality,
friendship, loyalty, and character--and creates a vivid and
unforgettable portrait of the author himself. Everything They Had takes
its rightful place alongside Halberstam's bestselling sports titles,
which include The Breaks of the Game, The Amateurs, Summer of '49, and The Education of a Coach.
His books were loaded with anecdotes, metaphors, suspense, and a narrative tone most writers reserve for fiction. The resulting books -- many of them huge bestsellers -- gave Halberstam heavyweight status (he won the Pulitzer for international reporting in 1964) and established him as an important commentator on American politics and power.
Halberstam was also known for his sports books. In The Breaks of the Game, which a critic for The New York Times called "one of the best books I've ever read about American sports," he took on professional basketball.
In The Amateurs, he examined the world of sculling; in Summer of '49 and October 1964, he focused on two pivotal baseball events: the Boston Red Sox's exasperating near victory over the New York Yankees for the 1949 pennant, and the 1964 season, when the Yankees lost the World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals. In 1999's Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made, Halberstam documented the making of a legend.
Always happy to extend his reach well beyond the subject at hand, Halberstam packed his books with social commentary as well as sports detail.
His writing routine was as strenuous and disciplined as that of any of the athletes he wrote about. To sustain his steady output of extensively researched, almost-always-massive books, he allows no unscheduled interruptions: "Most of us who have survived here [New York] after a number of years have ironclad work rules. Nothing interrupts us. Nothing," he once wrote in The New York Times. "We surface only at certain hours of the day."
Overview
"Sometimes sports mirrors society, sometimes it allows us to
understand the larger society a little better. But mostly, it is a world
of entertainment of talented and driven young men and women who do
certain things with both skill and passion."
--David Halberstam
David Halberstam was a distinguished journalist and historian of American ...