Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 11, 1995                   TAG: 9503170005
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SCOTT HERHOLD KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

HIS BOOKS PUT READERS WHERE THE ACTION IS

Halberstadt claims to be unafflicted by writer's block, rejection slips, or hand-wringing over ideas. With 30 books to his credit and another seven under contract, he is a most prolific author.

Employing a photographer's eye and a technician's command of detail, Halberstadt has written treatises on the American fire engine, the U.S. Navy Seals, SWAT teams, giant dump trucks, Cessna airplanes and Amish harvesters. He hopes to do a book called ``The Great American Bordello.''

``People call me up and say, `Hey, do you want to do a book?' '' said Halberstadt, 51, as he relaxed in his downtown home after finishing a book on railroad depots. ``And I say, `Sure.' That's been my publishing experience.''

Halberstadt, in fact, has found a perfect niche, turning out books that appeal because they put the reader in the cockpit or driver's seat of complex machines. He is a world-class interpreter of grown-ups' toys.

``I do books for 12-years olds, some of whom are still 12 and some of whom are in their 50s,'' Halberstadt said. ``That tends to be [about] certain kinds of cars, trucks, and airplanes.''

A typical Halberstadt book uses photographs liberally and sprinkles text that resembles a long magazine piece. In fact, Halberstadt employs a technique very much like that of a documentary film maker, which he once was. In some books, he has reproduced transcripts of police and fire calls.

``Most of the stories I traditionally have told have the smell of fresh blood about them,'' said Halberstadt, who says he can complete a book in two months. ``I like risk. I like stories about real people who tend to do risky things.''

It has provided a comfortable, though not ostentatious, living. One of his best-selling books, ``The American Fire Engine,'' based largely on the San Jose, Calif., fire department, has sold 40,000 copies and been translated into French and German. Even the book on dump trucks has found a surprising market niche.

``Hans takes an irreverent microscope to parts of Americana, whether it's history or culture or folklore,'' said publicist Christi Welter. ``He takes the mundane and gives it some spit and polish.''

Halberstadt's background is as unlikely as his subjects: Though he was the son of pacifists, he joined the Army at age 18, an act he said was influenced by the World War II veterans he knew. During the Vietnam War, he served as a gunner on a H-21 helicopter.

After getting a film degree from San Francisco State University in 1968, Halberstadt lived for three years in Washington, D.C., before returning to San Jose. Since 1972, he has lived with his wife, April, who now helps with his books.

For a number of years, he struggled to make a living as a free-lance film maker, turning out what he says were dreary educational films.

But in 1976, Halberstadt experienced an epiphany of sorts, when he and a friend successfully pitched a San Francisco publisher on the idea of a book about stained glass windows.

Ultimately, the publisher went out of business, depriving Halberstadt of royalties. But several years later, while doing a public relations film for Exxon, he met a Coast Guard captain who invited him along on the Coast Guard's largest cutter, the Morgenthau. Halberstadt went on part of an Alaskan patrol.

His subsequent book, ``The U.S.C.G.: Always Ready,'' became the first in a series of books on the military. Using his combat experience as a credential, Halberstadt subsequently did books on the Green Berets, the Navy Seals, the British Army, and the Russian Air Force.

The author, who describes his own political leanings as somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun, has enjoyed virtually unparalleled access to soldiers, in part because he drilled and drank with them.

``Hans is a unique animal,'' said Gerry Schumacher, a colonel in the Army reserve who says Halberstadt once interrupted his photography on a military helicopter to help rescue a parachutist whose line was tangled beneath the aircraft.

``There are many journalists who would have seen that as an opportunity to take extended photographs,'' said Schumacher. ``That incident garnered Hans a whole lot of respect.''

The majority of Halberstadt's work has been published by Motorbooks Publishers of Osceola, Wis., a small publisher that specializes in military and transportation books. He says his ideas come to him partly through his curiosity about American history and technology.

Lately, Halberstadt has been concentrating on nonmilitary fields: He has done a book on harvesters and combines and has five more planned on American farming.

And he said he is still hoping to sell a book on the history of bordellos, which has yet to find a publisher. He has done homework and said he has found - to the probable consternation of some feminists - that many of the prostitutes were very well-paid and liked their work.