Halberstam’s final effort highlights fall

This fall’s most star-studded book tour will feature Joan Didion, Seymour Hersh, Doris Kearns Goodwin and others reading coast to coast on behalf of an award-winning author they dearly wish could have discussed his work himself: David Halberstam.

“The Coldest Winter,” the final book Halberstam completed before his fatal car crash last spring, will be released by Hyperion on Sept. 25.

Friends and family of the author, known for his Vietnam War reporting, say that he had been especially proud of “Coldest Winter,” a history of the Korean War and what Halberstam regarded as the arrogant miscalculations of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

“He thought that it was the best work he had done since ‘The Best and the Brightest,’ ” says Halberstam’s widow, Jean Halberstam, referring to her husband’s book on Vietnam.

“He had been thinking about doing this book since he was in Vietnam. It was always in the back of his mind.”

Highlights of the promotional tour will include Didion reading in New York City, former basketball great Bill Walton in La Jolla, Calif., Hersh in Washington, D.C., writer Anna Quindlen in Milwaukee and Goodwin in Cambridge, Mass.

With other authors as well, this fall will be a season for war stories, old and new.

The Revolutionary War should remain a favorite subject thanks to books by the two most popular writers about that era: David McCullough and Joseph Ellis.

McCullough’s best-selling “1776” is being reissued in an illustrated edition (Oct. 2), while Ellis’ “American Creation” (Oct. 30) reflects on decisions made by the founding fathers.

Ken Burns’ World War II documentary, “The War,” is airing later this month on PBS stations and publisher Alfred A. Knopf expects a big push for the companion book, which will hit stores on Tuesday.

“The War” should also raise interest in other World War II titles, especially Rick Atkinson’s “The Day of Battle” (Oct. 2), Volume 2 of his “Liberation Trilogy.”

Tom Brokaw, the former NBC anchor who immortalized the World War II population as “The Greatest Generation,” looks at the Vietnam War and other news from the 1960s in “Boom” (Nov. 6).

Susan Faludi’s “The Terror Dream” (Oct. 2) will examine how the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks affected the culture.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a favorite of conservatives, will be featured in two books this fall. His memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son,” is scheduled to come out Oct. 1, two weeks after Jeffrey Toobin’s “The Nine,” a behind-the-scenes look into the current court.

The fall will feature works by and about the Bush administration, including first daughter Jenna Bush’s “Ana’s Story” (Sept. 28), a book for young adults about an HIV-positive teen mother, and “Blue Skies, No Fences” (Oct. 9), a memoir by Lynne Cheney, wife of the vice president.

A leading Bush critic, former CIA official Valerie Plame, recalls her career in intelligence – and the outing that ended it – in “Fair Game” (Oct. 22).

Books by and about other presidents also will arrive. Former President Jimmy Carter’s “Beyond the White House” (Oct. 2) looks back on his post-presidential years, while his previous “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” will come out in paperback with a new afterword (Sept. 18).

Former President Bill Clinton’s marriage and White House years are revisited by Sally Bedell Smith’s “For Love of Politics” (Oct. 23).

Another presidential book is Conrad Black’s 1,100-page “Nixon,” a biography of the disgraced former president. Ironically, Black, former chairman and CEO of Hollinger Inc., has been convicted on three charges of fraud and one count of obstruction of justice and is scheduled to be sentenced in November, the same month his book comes out.

For people anxious about the economy, the big book will be Alan Greenspan’s “The Age of Turbulence” (Sept. 17).

And for those who seek the country’s true pulse, Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert presents “I Am America (and So Can You)” (Oct. 9).

“I’m going to crush Greenspan,” Colbert deadpans. “His publisher made a huge mistake putting out his book at the same time as mine, because he is going to be eating my dust.”

Fiction releases offer a full mix of the literary and the commercial. Highlights include John Grisham’s “Playing for Pizza” (Sept. 24); Alice Sebold’s “Almost Moon” (Oct. 16), her first since the million-selling “The Lovely Bones”; Philip Roth’s “Exit Ghost” (Oct. 1), his last to include protagonist Nathan Zuckerman; “The Abstinence Teacher” (Oct. 16), from Tom Perrotta, the author of “Election” and “Little Children”; and Richard Russo’s “Bridge of Sighs” (Sept. 25).

Four of the most celebrated living poets – John Ashbery and former poet laureates Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass and Mark Strand – are releasing new collections.

But the season’s biggest seller will likely be Caroline Kennedy’s “A Family Christmas” (Oct. 30), with those represented ranging from E.B. White and Mark Twain to Kennedy’s grandmother, Rose F. Kennedy, and that famous bard, pop singer Mariah Carey.

Studs Terkel, the oral historian famous for talking to the nonfamous, has a memoir due, “Touch and Go” (Nov. 1), while comedian and former talk show host Rosie O’Donnell reveals how she survived in “Celebrity Detox” (Oct. 2).

Among others confiding in print are Steve Martin, Alan Alda, Dorothy Hamill and a bunch of rock stars, including Eric Clapton, Slash, Tom Petty and Rolling Stone Ron Wood – whose self-titled book is perhaps a warm-up for band mate Keith Richards’ planned memoir in 2010.

“All of them will be on my night stand, stacked,” Colbert promises.

And which will be on top?

“Whichever one my drink is resting on.”