A number of brief, informative essays are sandwiched in: on the sociology of all-white Vanderbilt University the eccentricities of the Nashville newspapers a history of city politics in Washington, D.C. female), as well as the often violent struggle against segregationists.

Halberstam examines the subtle frictions within the movement (middle-class vs. While some of the young people's names are familiar (e.g., Marion Barry, John Lewis), most are not, but the portraits of them and the society they lived in and challenged is richly detailed. As the group moves out of Nashville and encounters others in the movement, the book expands with the complexity, but fortunately not the imposed tidiness, of a Victorian novel. By focusing on a small group of young African Americans who attended the Reverend James Lawson's workshop for nonviolent demonstrators in Nashville in 1959, then went on to play active roles in the movement, he hits the high points of the civil rights struggle and makes them immediate: the Nashville sit-ins the founding of SNCC and CORE the Freedom Rides Bull Connor's attacks in Birmingham the Klan in Memphis the first singing of ''We Shall Overcome'' the voter registration campaign Bloody Sunday in Selma and the march to Montgomery.

And even if they succeed, they will have to live with the bitter knowledge that they were not the best, only close to it.This re-creation of the early days of the civil rights movement by Halberstam (The Fifties) is at once intimate and monumental. Pultizer-Prize winning journalist, David Halberstam takes as his focus the competitors in the 1984 single sculls trials in Princeton - Tiff Wood, John Biglow, Brad Lewis, and Joe Bouscaren - One man will win and gain the right to represent the United States in the 84 Olympiad the losers will then have to struggle further to gain a place in the two- or four-man boats. What drives these men to endure a physical pain known to no other sport? Who are they? Where do they come from? How do they regard themselves and their competitors? What have they sacrificed, and what inner demons have they appeased? They compete fiercely in a sport that holds no promise of financial reward. For the first time in almost 30 years, the United States rowing team has a serious chance to win an Olympic medal in the single sculls when four genuine challengers emerge for the opportunity to represent the U.S.

The amateurs halberstam