Journalist, author, historian David Halberstam

Editor's note: Just as we were preparing to ship this issue to the printer, David Halberstam was killed in an April 23 car crash. This, undoubtedly, is one of the last interviews Halberstam ever gave, and the thing that impresses us most about it is what

"The journalist as samurai," is how The Washington Post once described author David Halberstam. It is a fitting tribute given Halberstam's ability to produce a body of work that reflects the Japanese warriors' values of nobility and service. Born in New York in 1934, he graduated from Harvard in 1955 and embarked on a career in journalism that would lead him to The New York Times, where he won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for his international reporting on the Vietnam War. Vietnam was also the focus of Halberstam's 1972 The Best and the Brightest, which is just one of 15 bestsellers Halberstam penned. Read more – offline – from the current issue; subscribe to FRR.