DAVID HALBERSTAM’S LONG-AWAITED FOLLOW-UP TO HIS #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST
WAR IN A TIME OF PEACE
“Riveting, merciless . . . indispensable to anyone interested in that confused period between the Cold War and the Terrorist War about to begin.”
—John Lehman, The Wall Street Journal
“[David Halberstam] has produced a book that most journalists would give their right arm to have written, a tour de force of reportorial narration very much of the Best and the Brightest genre.”
—Richard Bernstein, The New York Times
“A sprawling tapestry of exquisite bottom-up reporting and powerful vignettes. . . . Now that foreign affairs have come home to the United States in the most crushing of ways, are the American people ready to read an account of foreign policy and its makers by one of the most astute writers in the trade? If they want to learn from the past decade, they should. If they want to think seriously about the future, they must.”
—Jane Perlez, The New York Times Book Review
“A finely crafted and enjoyable account of the shared culture and personal chemistry of America’s political and military powerbrokers.”
—The Economist
“The best war reporter of his generation, Halberstam has become one of the great synthesizers of modern American history.”
—Mark Bowden, The Washington Post Book World
“I sat down with this galley, forcing myself to open it, because I thought I already knew everything about this all-too-recent history. Seven hours later I was closing the pages, having absolutely devoured the book as if it was the most lurid, engaging, and unbelievable work of fiction.”
—Liz Smith, New York Post
“A brilliant study of how the fault line between Washington and the military, magnified by Vietnam, has determined recent foreign policy.”
—Joan Didion, New York magazine
“Well-written and lucid, his narrative reveals a military that continues to be ill-coordinated to meet—and sometimes opposed to—the political ends of its civilian overseers, who in turn often seem terminally confused about the rest of the world. Excellent, as is Halberstam’s custom, and instructive for those seeking to understand geopolitical realities.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“Events and personalities clash in this extraordinary sequel to Halberstam’s classic examination of America’s road to Vietnam. . . . This is vintage Halberstam, combining sharp portraits of the political players—Bush, Clinton, Powell, Madeleine Albright, and so many others—with nuanced reportage of the events they shape and are shaped by.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred)
“A work that adds to the legendary status of David Halberstam as an author and historian. As he did in The Best and the Brightest, the number one national bestseller about the Vietnam War, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Halberstam probes the bureaucracy to reveal the interplay between the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and Congress. His perceptive portraits of powerful U.S. and foreign government officials and military officers offer clues to explain not only what they did, but why they did it. Halberstam’s last eleven books have attained New York Times bestseller status. War in a Time of Peace might well make it an even dozen.”
—Alan Prince, BookPage
“Grade War in a Time of Peace as a big, important and fascinating book—big in its scope, important in its subject, fascinating in its tale-telling. Halberstam writes with great insight about the tension between military people and the civilians to whom they report.”