This image is the cover for the book Amateurs

Amateurs

In “one of the best books ever written about a sport,” Halberstam chronicles the story of four amateur US rowers and their 1984 Olympic dream (Newsweek).

In 1984, rowing was a sport continually relegated to the margins, far from the spotlights attracted by other Olympic events. That year, four men went head-to-head for the right to compete for gold as the United States’ single sculler, an honor that would lead not to lucrative endorsement deals, but to the fleeting glory of the Olympic Games, and the satisfaction of ranking supreme among their competitive community of oarsmen. In pursuit of that goal, the rowers pushed through crippling pain, delaying personal relationships and careers, all for the rush of winning. Determined to understand these athletes of a seemingly bygone era, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author David Halberstam chronicles their bravery and obsession, delivering a dramatic human story, buzzing with adrenaline, about the lengths to which athletes will go to prove their mettle and compete on the highest level. This ebook features an extended biography of David Halberstam.

David Halberstam

<B>David Halberstam</B> (1934-2007) was the author of twenty-two books, including fifteen bestsellers. Born in New York City, Halberstam spent much of the 1960s as a reporter for the <I>New York Times</I>, covering the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. His Vietnam reporting earned him both a George C. Polk Award and a 1964 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. <I>Vanity Fair</I> dubbed Halberstam "the Moses of American journalism," and the subjects of his books reflect his passion and range: war, foreign policy, history, and sports.<br><br><I>The Best and the Brightest</I> (1962), his sixth book, a critique of the Kennedy administration's Vietnam policy, became a #1 bestseller. His next book, <I>The Powers that Be</I>, a study of four American media companies, was hailed by the <I>New York Times</I> as a "prodigy of research." Many of Halberstam's books explored themes in professional sports, including bestsellers <I>The Teammates</I>, a portrait of the friendship between baseball players Ted Williams, Dominic DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, and Bobby Doerr, and <I>The Education of a Coach</I>, a profile of New England Patriots' Coach Bill Belichick.