The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War - Hardcover

Halberstam, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1401300529 ISBN 13: 9781401300524

Publisher: Hachette Books, 2007

Synopsis

"In a grand gesture of reclamation and remembrance, Mr. Halberstam has brought the war back home."
--The New York Times

David Halberstam's magisterial and thrilling The Best and the Brightest was the defining book about the Vietnam conflict. More than three decades later, Halberstam used his unrivaled research and formidable journalistic skills to shed light on another pivotal moment in our history: the Korean War. Halberstam considered The Coldest Winter his most accomplished work, the culmination of forty-five years of writing about America's postwar foreign policy.

Halberstam gives us a masterful narrative of the political decisions and miscalculations on both sides. He charts the disastrous path that led to the massive entry of Chinese forces near the Yalu River and that caught Douglas MacArthur and his soldiers by surprise. He provides astonishingly vivid and nuanced portraits of all the major figures-Eisenhower, Truman, Acheson, Kim, and Mao, and Generals MacArthur, Almond, and Ridgway. At the same time, Halberstam provides us with his trademark highly evocative narrative journalism, chronicling the crucial battles with reportage of the highest order. As ever, Halberstam was concerned with the extraordinary courage and resolve of people asked to bear an extraordinary burden.

The Coldest Winter is contemporary history in its most literary and luminescent form, providing crucial perspective on every war America has been involved in since. It is a book that Halberstam first decided to write more than thirty years ago and that took him nearly ten years to complete. It stands as a lasting testament to one of the greatest journalists and historians of our time, and to the fighting men whose heroism it chronicles.

About this title

Review

"A sprawling tapestry of exquisite bottom-up reporting and powerful vignettes."

"A riveting and merciless tale...In a certain sense, the book is another installment of The Best and the Brightest."

"Halberstam deploys a stunning novelistic skill in showing how his scores of characters feel about one another...Every page carries a graphic revelation of some piece of subtle delineation, flashes of insight struck off by the adjacencies of power."

Book Description

A magisterial and compellingly readable history of the Korean War from the acclaimed author of The Best and the Brightest, the defining account of the Vietnam War

About this edition

• Publisher: Hachette Books
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1401300529
• ISBN 13: 9781401300524
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 719