THE COLDEST WINTER America and the Korean War

The late, great David Halberstam has written a virtuoso tribute to "the forgotten war": Korea, early 1950s. This is much more than a history of the year in which the Chinese entered the war and almost pushed the South Koreans and Americans into the sea. Personalities and events parade across the narrative: generals, presidents, common soldiers, politics, and battles. And herein one also perceives why Scott Brick, with his middle-American voice, is recognized as such an outstanding narrator. An effective reader should disappear from a book such as this, leaving the listener without distraction. But Brick manages to add to the narrative with the increased intensity of his reading at all the appropriate moments. Nothing he does subtracts; everything he does adds. D.R.W. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2008]