David McCullough

His research — on Adams, Truman and so much more — was deep, his writing was lively, and his narrator's voice in documentary films was familiar to millions.

With the success of “The Johnstown Flood” and the support of his wife, he took a leap of faith, quitting his day job to write history and biography full time while the couple raised five children. “A new generation of historians, scholars and activists took to social media to accuse McCullough of romanticizing white settlement and downplaying the pain inflicted on Native Americans,” wrote The Associated Press. Such complaints as there were about his earlier works often had to do with his obvious affection for the subjects he chose. In 2011 came “The Greater Journey,” a lushly illustrated book about Americans in Paris beginning in 1830. He was also the host of the television magazine “Smithsonian World.” He had given some thought to writing fiction or plays or, on the other hand, going to medical school; in the event, he signed on as a trainee at Sports Illustrated, which had begun the previous year. David Gaub McCullough was born in Pittsburgh on July 7, 1933, one of four sons of Ruth (Rankin) and Christian McCullough. If he ever knew a dark day in his early years, there seems to be no record of it. “Jefferson was devoted to the ideal of improving mankind but had comparatively little interest in people in particular,” Mr. McCullough wrote. “Incredibly, you don’t want him to shut up,” one admirer, the journalist and blogger Gary North, wrote at the time. Yet there was hardly anything in his writing to suggest that he had ever staggered under the weight of his homework. Critics saluted him as a literary master, adept at imbuing the familiar with narrative drama and bringing momentous events to life through small details and the accounts of individual witnesses. Deep research and lively readability were hallmarks of his books, and so was their tendency to leap off the shelves.

The two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize was a master storyteller who brought to life the grand sweep of time and place.

“I was coming out of the St. George Hotel subway station in Brooklyn. The year was 1956. Mr. McCullough’s study of Roosevelt’s childhood, adolescence and early manhood became “Mornings on Horseback” (1981), which also won the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography. Yet he was often viewed as a mild-mannered caretaker between the presidencies of two more-towering figures, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower. The decision to write a profile of artist Pablo Picasso took Mr. McCullough in a new but ultimately futile direction. Years earlier, while writing “The Great Bridge” (1972), he had grown a beard in an effort to immerse himself in the life of one of the key builders of the Brooklyn Bridge. “I’ve always been interested in the creative force and how it affects history,” he told Publishers Weekly. “I’m not a canal freak or a bridge buff; I wanted to examine the people who built them. Mr. McCullough later became host and narrator of the Emmy-winning series “Smithsonian World,” broadcast on PBS and featuring stories about history, science and human achievement. “Discovery comes most often not from finding something unknown or long hidden, but from seeing afresh what has been on the table all along,” he told a publication of Cornell University, where he had once been a visiting professor. His father was a businessman, and his mother was a homemaker. “At one point, when I was very young, we were talking about the various founders, and he said, ‘I’ll do John Adams, and you should do Benjamin Franklin,’ ” Isaacson said in an interview. That’s what I’ve tried to convey,” Mr. McCullough told the Patriot Ledger of Quincy, Mass., in 2017. The passage of time had reduced the tragedy to a historical footnote, Mr. McCullough discovered, with little if any serious scholarly study devoted to it.

David McCullough, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winning historian whose biographies gave character and compelling narratives to figures and moments that make ...

He attended Yale University, majoring in English, and recalled to The Wall Street Journal that Thornton Wilder, a resident scholar, encouraged him to write. One of his final works, The Pioneers, drew some criticism for not more fully examining the treatment of Native Americans by white settlers in the 19th century. Although he already had been one of the country’s preeminent historians, the publication of Truman and John Adams over the next decade or so made him a household name. The Great Bridge, about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, was one of his first works, published in 1972, and ranked among the Modern Library’s best non fiction books of last century. Jonathan Karp, the CEO of Simon & Schuster, said in a statement, “David McCullough was a national treasure. His gift for storytelling translated into that of a narrator of documentaries like Ken Burns’ Civil War.

David McCullough, a towering force in American literature and biography, winner of the President's Medal of Freedom, two Pulitzer Prizes and two National ...

In his speech, Mr. McCullough talked about the complexity of the country and its history, beginning with a litany of what had gone wrong. “It was made in 1940,” he said during the 2011 interview. And one of the status symbols, if you will, was to have a piano in your house and a daughter taking piano lessons. “It is about the United States and the people. “I bought it secondhand in 1965 when I started my first book; I think I paid about $25. Everything I have written, I have written on this typewriter. History is about people and that is the most important.” But I also fell in love with the Island.” Mr. McCullough devoted his writing life to telling the American story, beginning with his first book about the Johnstown Flood, published in 1968, and continuing to chronicle events, politicians and structures that made up the American experience. He was introduced to the Island by his wife Rosalee, who had deep family roots. “You know why this is called Music street?” he asked a Gazette reporter during an interview in 2011 at his home. You get to the point where you know these people.” After college, he moved to New York City where he worked at various publications, while also writing in his spare time.

David McCullough, best-selling author and renowned historian who won Pulitzer Prizes for his biographies of presidents John Adams and Harry Truman, ...

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David McCullough, a proud native of Pittsburgh whose words and voice made American history come alive for millions, died Sunday at 89 at his home in Hingham, ...

“But just as important,” he continued, “David was a booster of all things Pittsburgh and never failed to call when the paper did something of enduring value. “We had a breakfast with McCullough at the William Penn Hotel and he said, ‘I’ve been working on this book for nearly 10 years, but the history center project is too important for Pittsburgh, so count me in,’” said Mr. Hunt. “It was wonderful to follow his books on Harry Truman and John Adams with mine on Franklin,” Mr. Isaacson said. Following the success of “The Great Bridge,” Mr. McCullough began writing full time, producing 12 titles in all. “A vivid stylist, his excellent early works, especially his book on the Brooklyn Bridge, showed how valuable that kind of history writing could be. His ability to tell the story of the American people has inspired millions, and his writing and his legacy will last for generations to come,” Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey wrote in a statement, adding that “he was one of Pittsburgh's finest." Eventually, he asked Mr. McCullough to be interviewed for the film, but in the process, the historian helped Mr. Burns polish the script. “I got my idea for the book when I would walk to work from Brooklyn to Manhattan,” he said later. “David McCullough was first and foremost a Pittsburgher,” said Andy Masich, president and CEO of the Sen. H. John Heinz History Center. “At an early age, he heard stories about Pittsburgh from his father that gave him a love of history. He always added a touch of class to those PBS histories, not with snobbery, but with innate dignity.” Mr. Masich said Mr. McCullough demonstrated his love of Pittsburgh through his efforts to found the history center and support it. “He gave me the greatest writing lessons I’ve ever had,” Mr. Burns recalled.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and writer David McCullough, who died on Sunday at the age of 89, was perhaps best known for his biographies of two often ...

Get out there and paint. And I highly recommend it to everyone. And I thanked him. When I was working on my Truman book, I interviewed one of his Secret Service guards. But his interests ranged far and wide, including the arts. In this excerpt of a 2011 interview with NewsHour's Jeffrey Brown, McCullough reflects on his love of research and discovery.

David McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author whose lovingly crafted narratives on subjects ranging from the Brooklyn Bridge to Presidents John Adams ...

McCullough researched the book in his spare time, and pleaded in vain with Little, Brown and Company to publish him. He loved history as a child, recalling lively dinner conversations, portraits of Washington and Lincoln that seemed to hang in every home and the field trip to a nearby site where Washington fought one of his earliest battles. At his home in Martha’s Vineyard, McCullough would proudly show visiting reporters a photograph of their first meeting, at a spring dance, the two gazing upon each other. Revulsion at the private life of Pablo Picasso drove him to abandon a planned book on the artist, while his biography on Adams was originally supposed to be on Adams and Thomas Jefferson, whose character also proved too flawed. “The Great Bridge,” a lengthy exploration of the Brooklyn Bridge’s construction, was ranked No. 48 on the Modern Library’s list of the best 100 nonfiction works of the 20th century and is still widely regarded as the definitive text of the great 19th century project. McCullough also was active in the preservation of historical regions. He worried that Americans knew too little about history and didn’t appreciate the sacrifices of the Revolutionary era. He helped raise the reputations of Truman and Adams, and he started a wave of best-sellers about the American Revolution, including McCullough’s own “1776.” “Hamilton” author Ron Chernow once called McCullough “both the name and the voice of American history.” “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. In earlier works, he was accused him of avoiding the harder truths about Truman, Adams and others and of placing storytelling above analysis. He saw himself as an everyman blessed with lifelong curiosity and the chance to take on the subjects he cared most about.

McCullough, one of the country's most popular history writers, died Sunday at his home in Massachusetts at age 89. It was just two months after the death of ...

McCullough didn’t study to become a historian but got into the field by way of writing. “There’s no place he loved more than Pittsburgh,” said Masich, who counted McCullough as a friend and mentor. “I grew up in a town, a city with such an abundance of history that we heard about history, and the history of Pittsburgh, not only in school but at the dinner table and the family’s stories, which were often very hilarious because there were so many eccentric people,” he said in a StoryCorps interview recorded here with Heinz History Center president and CEO Andy Masich. “We’re often directly connected to historic events that took place here. McCullough, one of the country’s most popular history writers, died Sunday at his home in Massachusetts at age 89. It just seemed to me that you couldn’t go anywhere that you weren’t seeing history right in front of you, if anybody were considerate enough and interested enough to tell you about it.” “He focused on the stories of people and told stories that people wanted to hear,” said Masich. “I think it was his innate sense of people and what they were interested in and how to tell a story that made him head-and-shoulders above many other historians of his generation.”

The prize-winning writer of history, acclaimed documentary narrator, and best-selling biographer of John Adams and Harry Truman has died at 89.

Nonetheless, the nerdy teenager who couldn’t get enough history remains grateful for his work and the inspiration for what a career in reading, writing, and speaking about history can be. What made McCullough’s previous works so accessible was his willingness to unflinchingly bare the flaws of his characters. If McCullough had brought that level of scrutiny to western migration, just imagine what he could have done for our national origin story. I think someone gave a copy of John Adams to my dad as a gift the next year, and like a typical teenager, I decided it was mine. But they also required cruelty to seize lands inhabited by Native peoples and a tremendous capacity for violence to wage war on the Native nations that made their homes in the Ohio Valley. That coldness is hard to read, but it’s an essential part of the story. To be sure, the white settlers who traveled west to make a new life for themselves required tremendous bravery to leave their homes, their families, and the lives they knew. He disowned one of his sons, Charles, for failing to conquer his (ultimately fatal) addiction to alcohol. For this tremendous service, he received every award imaginable, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom—a plaudit earned by only a small handful of distinguished writers. The binding has nearly disintegrated and sticky notes poke out of the pages. I could think of tons of examples of paintings I loved, or books that brought me to tears. I loved the John Adams I found in McCullough’s words—stubborn, self-righteous, insecure, virtuous, and utterly devoted to his fiercely intelligent wife.