According to his publisher Simon & Schuster, David McCullough, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author whose meticulously crafted narratives on topics like the Brooklyn Bridge and Presidents John Adams and Harry Truman made him among the most well-known and influential historians of his time, has passed away. He was 89.
His five children were at his side when McCullough passed away on Sunday in Hingham, Massachusetts, according to a Facebook post from his family. The Facebook post said that the McCullough family was “very thankful of the assistance during this difficult time and the support of his many readers over the years.”
Less than two months after his wife, Rosalee, McCullough passed away.
“David McCullough was a national treasure. His books brought history to life for millions of readers. Through his biographies, he dramatically illustrated the most ennobling parts of the American character,” Simon & Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp said in a statement.
A joyous and tireless student of the past, McCullough dedicated himself to sharing his own passion for history with the general public. He saw himself as an everyman blessed with lifelong curiosity and the chance to take on the subjects he cared most about. His fascination with architecture and construction inspired his early works on the Panama Canal and the Brooklyn Bridge, while his admiration for leaders whom he believed were good men drew him to Adams and Truman. In his 70s and 80s, he indulged his affection for Paris with the 2011 release “The Greater Journey” and for aviation with a best-seller on the Wright Brothers that came out in 2015.
In addition to his works, the dapper, white-haired McCullough may have been the most well-known historian, thanks to Ken Burns’ monumental “Civil War” documentary and “The American Experience” viewers’ familiarity with his fatherly baritone. McCullough was previously referred to as “both the name and the voice of American history” by “Hamilton” author Ron Chernow.
The worst criticism leveled against McCullough was that his celebrations of American history were too readily romanticized. For downplaying the horrors inflicted against Native Americans as 19th-century settlers migrated west, his 2019 book “The Pioneers” received criticism. In previous writings, he was charged of putting narrative above analysis and skirting the more difficult realities about Truman, Adams, and others.
“McCullough’s specific contribution has been to treat large-scale historical biography as yet another genre of spectatorial appreciation, an exercise in character recognition, a reliable source of edification and pleasant uplift,” Sean Wilentz wrote in The New Republic in 2001. Interviewed that same year by The Associated Press, McCullough responded to criticism that he was too soft by saying that “some people not only want their leaders to have feet of clay, but to be all clay.”
But even his critics lauded him for his compassion and charity as much as his brilliance. And his tales touched the hearts of millions of readers as well as the smaller group of prize judges. For many years, McCullough produced works on a Royal Standard typewriter from a wireless hut outside his home on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, that altered perceptions and influenced the market. In addition to launching a string of best-sellers on the American Revolution, including McCullough’s own “1776,” he helped boost the careers of Truman and Adams.
For “The Path Between the Seas,” a book about the construction of the Panama Canal, and for “Mornings on Horseback,” a biography of Theodore Roosevelt, McCullough won the National Book Award. He also won Pulitzer Prizes for “Truman” in 1992 and “John Adams” in 2002. The extensive examination of the Brooklyn Bridge’s construction known as “The Great Bridge,” which was named No. 48 on the Modern Library’s list of the top 100 nonfiction books of the 20th century, is still recognized as the standard source for the important 19th century undertaking. The 16th Street Bridge in Pittsburgh was dubbed the “David McCullough Bridge” in honor of him on his 80th birthday.
Additionally, McCullough was well-liked in Washington, D.C. In 1989, he spoke before a joint session of Congress, and in 2006, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Many politicians, particularly those who read his biographies of Truman and Adams, have said that they have read his works. Citing Jimmy Carter “Politicians on both sides of the dispute acknowledged “The Path Between the Seas” as a motivating element in pressing for the 1977 treaties that gave ownership of the Panama Canal back to Panama. McCullough was among the academics that gathered at the White House shortly after Barack Obama was elected.
For the most of his life, the historian remained politically neutral, but in 2016, he joined Burns and Chernow in criticizing Republican presidential contender Donald Trump as a “monstrous clown with a monstrous ego.” Education was another strongly held concern for McCullough. He was concerned that Americans didn’t understand enough about history and didn’t value the sacrifices made during the American Revolution. He often addressed audiences on college campuses and in front of Congress. In one Senate Committee hearing, he said that due to the No Child Left Behind Act, “history is being thrown on the back burner or removed off the stove completely in many or most schools, in favor of arithmetic and reading.”
Additionally, McCullough was involved in the preservation of historic areas. He was among the historians and writers who protested the Walt Disney Company’s proposed Civil War theme park in an area of northern Virginia of significant historical interest in the 1990s. He also opposed the construction of a residential tower close to the Brooklyn Bridge.
At the time, McCullough lamented that there was “so little that is honest and true” remaining. “It is nearly blasphemy to replace what we have with plastic, manufactured, mechanical history.”
The dishonest New York politicians associated in the Brooklyn Bridge were one of the villains McCullough took on in his works, but he preferred to write about people he loved, comparing it like picking a roommate. He abandoned a book on Pablo Picasso because of his private life, and he had intended to write a biography on John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, but Jefferson’s persona was too problematic.
McCullough was born in Pittsburgh in 1933; his father and grandparents established the McCullough Electric Company. He remembers having fascinating dinner talks as a youngster, seeing pictures of Washington and Lincoln in almost every house, and going on a field trip to a neighboring location where Washington fought one of his first fights. At Yale University, where he majored in English, he met playwright Thornton Wilder, who inspired the budding author. Before deciding to write a book about the Johnstown Flood, which occurred in his home state of Pennsylvania in 1889 and claimed more than 2,000 lives, McCullough worked at the United States Information Agency, Sports Illustrated, and the American Heritage Publishing Company. The flood was as catastrophic at the time as Hurricane Katrina was more than a century later.
While working on the book in his leisure time, McCullough begged Little, Brown and Company to publish him. His publisher for the remainder of his career was Simon & Schuster, who published the book in 1968 for an advance of $5,000.
Because of the popularity of “The Johnstown Flood,” McCullough was concerned that he might come to be known as “Bad News McCullough,” an author of failure. His writing on the Chicago Fire and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was requested by publishers. So he recounted a success tale in “The Great Bridge,” his subsequent book. The fact that I didn’t know much about civil engineering, that I struggled in math and physics, or that I wasn’t particularly interested in mechanical stuff didn’t stop me in the least, he later reflected. “I felt very elated. I was quite curious about a lot of things.”
The Path Between the Seas and Mornings on Horseback, both by McCullough, were published in the years that followed. Gore Vidal commended them as “part of a new and pleasant genre: the biographical sketch.” Despite winning the National Book Award, “Mornings on Horseback” was eclipsed, according to Vidal, by the publication of Edmund Morris’ Pulitzer Prize–winning “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.” It would be the last instance in which a McCullough novel would be given second billing.
Although he had contemplated writing a biography of Franklin Roosevelt, he decided to focus on Truman, who was less energetic but more frank than Roosevelt. McCullough spent the next ten years writing the book. He briefly resided in Truman’s hometown of Independence, Missouri, and adopted the former president’s daily ritual of going for a morning walk.
When “Truman” was released in 1992, it became a million-seller, capping and confirming a protracted ascent in the stature of a man who, 40 years before, had left office with an approval rating of around 30% and was now almost a sainted as a sincere and tenacious leader. Presidential aspirant Ross Perot, who frankly likened himself to Truman, and the first President Bush, who even sought advice from McCullough during his lost reelection campaign, were both admirers of the book.
When “John Adams” was released in 2001, it was equally well-liked and beneficial to its subject, leading to Congress enacting legislation to erect a monument in his honor later that year. “2005 saw the release of 1776′′, followed by an illustrated version in 2007. Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney starred in an HBO miniseries based on “John Adams” that aired in 2008. A miniseries based on McCullough’s book on the Wright brothers was in the works by Tom Hanks.
McCullough had five children and, thanks to his late wife Rosalee Barnes, whom he married in 1954 and who passed away in June, had a fondness for happily married statesmen like Truman and Adams. She served as his buddy, inspiration, and editor. McCullough would proudly display a snapshot of the two of them looking into one other at their first encounter at a spring dance to visiting media at his Martha’s Vineyard home.
According to “60 Minutes,” he was inspired to create “The Great Bridge,” his second book and first bestseller, by the fact that he and his wife were newlyweds and living in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge was dubbed “America’s Eiffel Tower” by the speaker.
He told “60 Minutes” that if you could take up this bridge and flip it over, it would read “Made in America” below. Later, he remarked, “This bridge deals with motion. Ships passing below, pedestrians crossing the promenade, and continuous flow of traffic. It continues to fulfill its function.”
If we have a society that is intelligent and respectful enough to take care of it, it will last “forever,” he said.