David Halberstam died about 13 hours ago in an automobile accident in Menlo Park, California. He was 73 years old.
This strikes me pretty hard, not only because he was a great writer and reporter, but because I am in the process of reading his book The Fifties, about the decade that made the 60s, 70s, and 80s what they are today. The thesis of the book is that World War II was what we might nowadays call a singularity -- after it, practically everything in America was different. And the 1950s was when those differences began to take hold, and the resistance to those differences began to strengthen.
This strikes me pretty hard, not only because he was a great writer and reporter, but because I am in the process of reading his book The Fifties, about the decade that made the 60s, 70s, and 80s what they are today. The thesis of the book is that World War II was what we might nowadays call a singularity -- after it, practically everything in America was different. And the 1950s was when those differences began to take hold, and the resistance to those differences began to strengthen.
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