The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War | David Halberstam

The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War | David Halberstam | The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War

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The Coldest Winter...

	The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War David Halberstam Hyperion, 2007 - 736 pages average customer review:based on 131 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The causes, costs, politics and players of the war that nobody won

As a child growing up in New York my memories of the Korean War include a social studies class with the words "Aggression in Korea" written on the blackboard and, later, a ticker tape parade for Douglas MacArthur. More than fifty years have passed since then. Other world events made headlines and the war that nobody seems to have won faded from interest. During all those years though, David Halberstam was honing his skills as a journalist, including a Pulitzer Prize for his epic work about the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest. He was always fascinated by what happened in Korea though, and after several years of research, produced this epic analysis of the causes, the costs, the politics and all the players of this somewhat unappreciated period in American history. Sadly, just days after submitting the completed manuscript to his publisher, he was tragically killed in a car accident, leaving this final masterwork for future generations.

The book is more than 700 pages long, including all the footnotes. It took me several months to read because it is so dense with facts that a few pages were all I could absorb at one time. I was fascinated though and details would echo in my mind until I picked the book up again, feeling the pull of this history with all its characters, battles, politics, miscalculations, subtleties and finely honed portraits of all the important players. It's all there, the victory in WW2, the atom bomb and the occupation of Japan under Douglas MacArthur, whose personal biography is traced back for several generations and who comes across as an arrogant self-righteous despot with little regard for the waste of human life.

Halberstam interviewed former soldiers for up-close and personal descriptions of the battles. He researched thousands of government documents, including diaries of President Truman and correspondence with General Ridgway. There were differences of opinions and conflicts in Washington and names such Dean Atchison, Omar Bradley and George C. Marshall which I have only heard in passing, became real to me. I learned about the conflict between Mao and Stalin and the leaders of both North and South Korea. I learned about how the threat of communism led to the excesses of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

I know I'll never remember the names and details all the battles. But I will remember the incredible hardships of the fighting men on both sides with temperatures well below zero on mountainous terrain. Some American forces were sent to battle in only their summer uniforms. The tanks and trucks were not suited to the landscape. The ammunition was all wrong. Weapons that had been supplied to Nationalist China had all been taken by the Chinese Communists and were now being used against the Americans. Over and over I cringed with horror at all the mistakes and miscalculations. War is horrible, particularly when the cause is based on politics and ego.

I loved this book. It was worth all those hours and hours and hours of reading. It is truly a masterpiece and a lasting tribute to a great journalist. I give one of my highest recommendations.

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The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War

This is by far the best book covering the Korean War that I have read. It is written with a style and knowledge of the subject that makes this a book that is hard to put down. Obviously well-researched, Halberstam reveals aspects of the war and its participants that will surprise the majority of readers who have been exposed to very little concerning "the forgotten war." Highly recommended for the casual reader as well as the serious student.

Halberstam's masterpiece

In his incredibly productive life, David Halberstam wrote brilliantly on a myriad of topics _ from Bill Belichick to this, an opus that sheds light not only on the mostly ignored Korean War but on the failures of world diplomacy and American politicians after World War II. Sadly, it continues into the 21st century.

Others, including a number of Korean War veterans, have written eloquently on Halberstam's portrayal of that sad epic _ or rather the first year-and-a-half of it, and the failure of leadership in both Washington and Tokyo. What struck me, someone who has read a lot of military history, was the portrait of what has to be one of the worst generals ever to hold high command in the U.S. Army _ Ned Almond, a racist of incredible hubris and equal incompetence who was allowed to keep his post as X Corps commander even when Ridgway took over the 8th Army command. Even the worst of the union commanders in the Civil War were more fit than he was.

But what really struck me was the insight into Soviet, Chinese, and American politics that has led to a series of unnecessary wars, right up to Iraq. I've always sensed it with one part of my brain, but never thought consistenly about how U.S. domestic policy drives foreign policy, right up to the use of 9/11 to justify the disastrous Iraq invasion. Halberstam clearly catches the mood of American politics during Korea _ the dominance of the China Lobby. But he also catches in the last 20 pages the way the Democratic party has been paralyzed since by the effects of that war _ that the sense of being "soft,'' first on Communism and then on terrorism, led to Vietnam and the early lack of dissent on Iraq.

Maybe this book will contribute to a new reality in American politics.

Given the history Halberstam portrays, probably not.

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A disappointing conclusion, but a good, informative read

As other reviewers have noted, this is not a comprehensive history of the Korean War. However as in most good historical works, the author is highly selective in the material he chooses to present. That material supports the author's main theme: the political failures that lead to the war, the personal failures that resulted in the creation of a debacle, and the failure to learn any lessons from the war that resulted in a repetition of the failures, even to this day.

The book draws to a rather abrupt, and for me disappointing, conclusion immediately after the events of Chipyongni with about 2 years left to go in the war. But on reflection I think the unsatisfying conclusion to the book simply mirrors the unsatisfying conclusion to the war itself.

The nugget of gold in this book is found at the end in the section called "The Consequences", and in the epilogue. A lot of food for thought there. And some interesting conclusions as to the consequences of the war for the rest of the century and beyond.

I came away with a much better understanding of this war, its causes and consequences. And it was an excellent read by a good author.

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The Coldest Winter

After his early work on Vietnam 'The Best and the Brightest', this is another masterpiece from Halberstam. His mixture of battle narrative and character analysis is irresistible; one really cannot put it down after Chapter 1 on the Yalu River and China's entry into the Korean War. It is also provocative and convincing about the errors of the late 1940s and early 1950s that led to so much grief for the USA, indeed up to the recent bogdown in Iraq. Much of Halberstam reads like Titus Livius, especially the Roman historian's account of the war with Hannibal.

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