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David Halberstam
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The Powers That Be Kindle Edition

by David Halberstam (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 326 ratings
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A Pulitzer Prize winner’s in-depth look at four media-business giants: CBS-TV, Time magazine, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.

In this fascinating New York Times bestseller, the author of The Best and the Brightest, The Fifties, and other acclaimed histories turns his investigative eye to the rise of the American media in the twentieth century.
 
Focusing on the successes and failures of CBS Television, Time magazine, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, David Halberstam paints a portrait of the era when large, powerful mainstream media sources emerged as a force, showing how they shifted from simply reporting the news to becoming a part of it. By examining landmark events such as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s masterful use of the radio and the unprecedented coverage of the Watergate break-in, Halberstam demonstrates how print and broadcast media as a whole became a player in society and helped shape public policy.
 
Drawn from hundreds of exhaustive interviews with insiders at each company, and hailed by the Seattle Times as “a monumental X-ray study of power,” The Powers That Be reveals the tugs-of-war between political ambition and the quest for truth in a page-turning read.
 This ebook features an extended biography of David Halberstam.
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  1. Print length
    963 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Open Road Media
  5. Publication date
    December 18, 2012
  6. File size
    7362 KB
  7. Page Flip
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  8. Word Wise
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From the Publisher

An Illustrated Biography

Young Halberstam

Halberstam and Daughter

Halberstam on NYT

Young Halberstam and Typewriter

Young Halberstam and his typewriter in the Congo in 1960.

Halberstam and Daughter

Halberstam and his daughter, Julia, at a Fourth of July parade in Nantucket, in 1983.

Halberstam on NYT Panel

Halberstam, second from right, on a New York Times panel. Journalist Dexter Filkins (The Forever War) is to his right, discussing the Iraq war. This is one of the last photos of Halberstam before his death in 2007.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“[An] important and admirable book . . . The Powers That Be will remain stirring history.” —The New York Times Book Review  “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.” —The Nation   

About the Author

David Halberstam (1934–2007) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author. He is best known for both his courageous coverage of the Vietnam War for the New York Times, as well as for his twenty-one nonfiction books—which cover a wide array of topics, from the plight of Detroit and the auto industry to the captivating origins of baseball’s fiercest rivalry. Halberstam wrote for numerous publications throughout his career and, according to journalist George Packer, single-handedly set the standard of “the reporter as fearless truth teller.” Halberstam died in 2007.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00AG8FZ1K
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Open Road Media (December 18, 2012)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 18, 2012
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 7362 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 963 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 326 ratings

About the author

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David Halberstam

David Halberstam

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David Halberstam, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, has chronicled the social, political, and athletic life of America in such bestselling books as The Fifties, The Best and the Brightest, and The Amateurs. He lives in New York.

Photo by William H. Mortimer (ebay.com, front of photo, back of photo) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
326 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Pallcaredoc
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly informative
Reviewed in the United States on February 18, 2024
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Perhaps not Halberstams best written book due to redundancies, but a solid, intriguing history of contemporary media in America focusing on Time, the NYT, Washington Post, LAT, and CBS with their strengths and warts. Explores the forces that shape the news and its processing. Too bad the book was written before the cynical and malevolent machinations of the Fox News empire could be revealed.
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Sue Short
5.0 out of 5 stars powerful and entertaining
Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2023
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powerful, entertaining. The history of the organizations was fascinating and scary.
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Andy in Washington
4.0 out of 5 stars Loved it, Hated it, Then Loved it Again
Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2014
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I am almost always a fan of David Halberstam. He is usually very insightful, keeps his facts straight, and while he can be long winded, no one will ever accuse him of skipping important details. He is usually capable of examining history from all sides, and capturing the interaction of various factors that make up a story.

=== The Good Stuff ===

* The beginning and ends of the book are excellent. It is a shame the book was written in the '70s, because so much of the history Halberstam covers is directly applicable to modern politics. For example, the author discusses how FDR used the "fireside chat" and the medium of radio to appeal directly to voters and bypass the typical political machines. Twenty years later, JFK does the same thing with television. So in 2008, when Barrack Obama was credited with developing a totally new election strategy by appealing to social media, he was in fact going down a well worn path-but just with a different technology.

* Halberstam also does a decent job at capturing the way the press operated in prior decades. While we seem to think of today's press as being overly polarized and incapable of presenting logical arguments instead of 10-second sound bites, we find that this charge has been hurled at the press since at least FDR, and I wouldn't be surprised if Caesar felt the same way.

* I believe Halberstam was at his finest in describing Watergate, and specifically how the team of Bernstein and Woodward cracked the case. It was amazing how the biggest scandal in American politics was almost buried several times for any number of reasons. You can't help but wonder how many other scandals were missed because the reporters involved were also covering the St. Patrick's day parade.

=== The Not-So-Good Stuff ===

* While Halberstam writes in an easy-to-read style, there were some sentences that had to be read a few times to get the meaning. Also, the book is long, and I had trouble reading more than a chapter or so at a time, which is unusual for me. While the book at times seemed overly detailed, there wasn't really much that I could point to as being superfluous. Rather, the stories were complicated, had many characters, and were all affected by many events. In this case, better too long than too short.

* My biggest criticism though was I felt that midway through the book, Halberstam lost his creativity. A fair chunk of the book is about the press coverage of Vietnam, a topic that the author was personally involved with. The problem is that Halberstam lets his personal involvement intrude into the narrative-at one point going so far as to write in the 1st person. He also either sets the record straight- or has an ax to grind- depending on your viewpoint. At any rate, it clouded the rest of the book as it was tough to tell if his own opinions were clouding the narrative.

=== Summary ===

I enjoyed the book, and found it to be one of my favorite types of history books- one that kicks off some independent thought on what could have happened, or what might happen next. While the book has no events more recent than 1975, I found that it was directly applicable to modern journalism and history and the interface between them. It was amazing how many of today's unique challenges and problems are merely rehashes of things that were struggled with previously-and probably will be struggled with again.
10 people found this helpful
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Stepheny Forgue Houghtlin
5.0 out of 5 stars A Top Ten for anyone's favorite books.....
Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2023
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This is Halberstam at his best. A fascinating read of the evolution of newspapers, Radio and TV with all the names that created the new world of communication. Fascinating!!!! You will understand how the power of these three platforms came to be what they are today.. LOVED it.
One person found this helpful
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PoliSciJunkie
5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding Look at Boardroom and Newsroom of Legacy Media
Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2016
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I was enthralled by this book that looks at journalism's most powerful institutions during the mid-20th century. CBS has fallen from its stance as the king TV News. The book also delves into how influential the L.A. Times was in making Richard Nixon a political force. The story of the Washington Post--best known for its eventual Watergate triumph--is perhaps the most astonishing story. A newspaper bought at a bankruptcy auction that Kay Phil and Kay Graham would eventually lead to greatness even after personal tragedy. This is a wonderful look at both the newsroom and corporate side of media empires. Interesting style. Rather than having one section on the Post, another on Time, etc..., the book was a chronological history, and shifted from each media out. Halberstam has few comparables. But, it would be great to see a new version with the titans of today, that would include the inside story of new media titans, i.e. HuffPo, Breitbart, Roger Ailes's Fox News, etc...
One person found this helpful
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E. King
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book. The beginnings of today's media giants.
Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2011
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I've read a couple of other books by David Halbsterstam and have enjoyed his depth of research and writing style. So I figured this should be an interesting book. I'm about 1/2 way through, and it's great. Amazing stories and details about the beginnings of CBS and Time. Remember, radio, TV and national weekly magazines are products of the 20th century. So how did they get off the ground? What hurdles did they face? What about the men who started them, and then, what happened when things really got going in the post WW II era.

Same with newspapers, except there were dozens of daily newspapers around. That how people got their news before radio and TV took over. So what about the LA Times and Washington Post. How did they become the powers they are. It's all great reading by a great author. Written back in the 1970's, it gives the insights before media were corrupted by the onset of cable and polarized by politics. I'm loving it.
6 people found this helpful
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Brother Mule
5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read
Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2017
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"Halberstam tells us that he thinks of "The Powers That Be"--which began as a somewhat more modest enterprise than it turned out to be--as a study of the "rise of the modern media and their effect on the way we perceive events. (Richard Rovere New York Times, April 22, 1979)

This book is as relevant today as it was 38 years ago. Given that this was before the advent of the internet, is still provides a great sense of the history of print and electronic media, as well as how the media is manipulated by the Powers That Be. Nothing has changed other than the venue for our consumption of what the media dictates what we know of events and in Halberstam's own words "more importantly what we don't know".
14 people found this helpful
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Lisa Cugini
4.0 out of 5 stars A Learning experience
Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2023
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The Powers That Be was an exhaustive learning experience. It was an extensive and fascinating history of major networks, magazines, and newspapers. However, the punctuation and sentence structure errors were frequent and quite distracting. Where were the copy-editors??
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Top reviews from other countries

V Navaneetham
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in India on July 25, 2016
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Very nice
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