McCullough, David 1933–

(David Gaub McCullough)

PERSONAL: Born July 7, 1933, in Pittsburgh, PA; son of Christian Hax (a businessman) and Ruth (Rankin) McCullough; married Rosalee Ingram Barnes, December 18, 1954; children: Melissa, David Jr., William Barnes, Geoffrey Barnes, Doreen Kane. Education: Yale University, B.A., 1955. Hobbies and other interests: Travel, reading, landscape painting.

ADDRESSES: Agent—Janklow & Nesbit Associates, 445 Park Ave., Ste. 13, New York, NY 10022-2606.

CAREER: Editor and writer for Time, Inc., New York, NY, 1956–61, U.S. Information Agency, Washington, DC, 1961–64, and American Heritage Publishing Co., New York, NY, 1964–70; freelance writer, 1970–. Host of television series Smithsonian World, 1984–88, and The American Experience, 1988–, for Public Broadcasting Service Television (PBS-TV). Narrator of numerous documentaries, including The Civil War, Huey Long, The Statue of Liberty, The Shakers, and Brooklyn Bridge. Scholar-in-residence, University of New Mexico, 1979, Wesleyan University Writers Conference, 1982–83; Newman Visiting Professor of American Civilization, Cornell University, 1989. Member, Bennington College Writers Workshop, 1978–79; member of advisory board, Center for the Book, Library of Congress; visiting professor, Dartmouth College and Wesleyan University; member, Harry S Truman Centennial Commission; trustee for Shady Side Academy, Pittsburgh, PA, the National Trust for Historical Preservation, the Harry S Truman Library Institute, the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, the Jefferson Memorial Foundation, and the Boston Public Library; honorary trustee, Carnegie Institute. Speaker and lecturer on history.

MEMBER: Society of American Historians (president, 1991–), American Society of Civil Engineers (honorary), American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Protect the History of America (founding member).

AWARDS, HONORS: Special citation for excellence, Society of American Historians, 1973, Diamond Jubilee medal for excellence, City of New York, 1973, and certificate of merit, Municipal Art Society of New York, 1974, all for The Great Bridge; National Book Award for history, Francis Parkman Award from Society of American Historians, Samuel Eliot Morison Award, and Cornelius Ryan Award, all 1978, all for The Path between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914; Civil Engineering History and Heritage award, 1978; Los Angeles Times Award for biography, 1981, National Book Award for biography, 1982, and Pulitzer Prize nomination in biography, 1982, all for Mornings on Horseback; Emmy Award, for interview with Anne Morrow Lindbergh on Smithsonian World; Guggenheim Fellowship, 1987; Pulitzer Prize for Biography, 1993, for Truman; Harry S Truman Public Service Award, 1993; St. Louis Literary Award, 1993; Pennsylvania Society Gold Medal Award, 1994; Charles Frankel Prize for contributions to humanities; Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award; Literary Lion Award, New York Public Library; The Path between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914 was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection; Pulitzer Prize in biography category, Christopher Award, finalist for L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award, and Pulitzer Prize for biography, all 2002, all for John Adams; Freedom Trail Foundation Patriot Award, 2003. Honorary degrees include H.L.D., Rens-selaer Polytechnic Institute, 1983; D.Eng., Villanova University, 1984; Litt.D., Allegheny College, 1984; L.H.D, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, 1984; Litt.D., Middlebury College, 1986; Litt.D., Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 1991; H.L.D., University of New Hampshire, 1991; Litt.D., University of South Carolina, 1993; Litt.D., University of Pittsburgh, 1994; Litt.D., Union College, 1994; Litt.D., Washington College, 1994; and L.H.D., Chatham College, 1994.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) C.L. Sulzberger, The American Heritage Picture History of World War II, American Heritage Publishing (New York, NY), 1967, revised edition published as World War II, McGraw (New York, NY), 1970.

1968–70(Editor) Smithsonian Library, six volumes, Smithsonian Institution Press/American Heritage Publishing (Washington, DC).

The Johnstown Flood (Readers Digest Condensed Book), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1968, revised edition 2004.

The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge (Readers Digest Condensed Book), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1972, revised edition with new introduction by the author, 2001.

The Path between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1977, revised edition, 1999.

Mornings On Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt, (biography), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1981, revised edition with new introduction by the author, 2001.

(And host) "A Man, a Plan, a Canal—Panama" (episode of Nova), first broadcast on PBS-TV, November 3, 1987.

(Editor with others) Michael E. Shapiro and Peter H. Frederick, Remington: The Masterworks, Abrams (New York, NY), 1988.

Brave Companions: Portraits in History, Prentice Hall (New York, NY), 1992.

Truman, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1992.

Why History?, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1996.

John Adams, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2001.

1776, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to books, including A Sense of History: The Best Writing from the Pages of American Heritage, 1985, and Extraordinary Lives: The Art and Craft of American Biography, edited by William Zinsser, 1986. Author of foreword to Thomas Mellon and His Times, edited by Mary Louise Briscoe, 1994, A Bully Father: Theodore Roosevelt's Letters to His Children, edited by Joan Patterson Kerr, 1995, and Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children, edited by Dorie McCullough Lawson, 2004. Contributor to periodicals, including Audubon, Architectural Forum, American Heritage, Geo, Smithsonian, New York Times, New Republic, Psychology Today, and Washington Post. Senior contributing editor, American Heritage; contributing editor, Parade. Narrator of film Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided, 2001. Seminars the author taught at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government under the Theodore H. White lecture program were published by the Joan Shorenstein Center and Harvard University, 2002.

ADAPTATIONS: John Adams was adapted as an audio-book, read by Edward Herrmann, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2001; The Great Bridge was adapted as an audiobook, read by Edward Herrmann, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2004; The Path between the Seas was adapted as an audiobook, read by Edward Herrmann, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2004; 1776 was adapted as an audiobook, read by author, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: David McCullough is known to many Americans as an important disseminator of history not only through his award-winning books, but also through his appearances as host of the PBS television programs Smithsonian World and The American Experience. Recognition of his abilities includes an Academy Award nomination for a film on the Brooklyn Bridge; bestseller status for John Adams; the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Harry S Truman; and National Book awards for his narrative histories The Path between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914 and Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt. Critic Richard Robbins noted in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that in these histories, "David McCullough combines a powerful narrative style with an exhaustive concern for the details of a story."

McCullough's first book, The Johnstown Flood, grew out of his desire to learn more about the 1889 bursting of a Pennsylvania dam that claimed the lives of more than two thousand people and was one of the most widely reported stories of the late nineteenth century. None of the volumes McCullough consulted proved satisfactory, however, and he finally decided he would have to write the book himself. Upon its publication, several reviewers deemed The Johnstown Flood an important addition to the field of social history. For example, Alden Whitman, writing in the New York Times, called it "a superb job, scholarly yet vivid, balanced yet incisive."

In 1972 McCullough published The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge. Considered by contemporaries and historians to be the greatest engineering feat of America's "Gilded Age," the Brooklyn Bridge was the dream of one man, John Roebling, a wealthy steel cable manufacturer. When he died in 1869, before construction of the bridge actually began, his son Washington A. Roebling became chief engineer, and, over the next thirteen years, saw the bridge completed. McCullough traces the dangers that the younger Roebling faced and the problems he overcame, ranging from corrupt politicians in Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall to cases of the "bends" that afflicted workers and left Roebling himself a semi-invalid for the rest of his life.

The Great Bridge covers both the engineering and social aspects of the bridge's construction. "The whole story is told in David McCullough's admirably written, definitive and highly entertaining book," remarked L.J. Davis in the Washington Post Book World. "He is especially adept at weaving in those disparate but relevant details that bring an age to life, from the Cardiff giant to the scandal of Henry Ward Beecher's infidelity. It is hard to see how the story could be better or more thoroughly told." "McCullough does justice to this gamy background," observed Justin Kaplan in Saturday Review, "but never allows it to get the better of his subject or his narrative or to turn into that familiar historical stereotype that obscures the fact that the Gilded Age was a period of enormous achievement in virtually every area of activity."

McCullough shifted settings from Brooklyn to Panama for The Path between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914. Once again the author mixes engineering with social, political, and economic history, this time to create a panorama of the canal project from its origins to the day it finally opened. Beginning with the dream of Suez Canal entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps, McCullough describes how political corruption, disease, anti-Semitism, and bankruptcy put an end to French efforts to dig a sea-level canal across the isthmus of Panama. Later, McCullough relates, the Americans under the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt connived to "liberate" Panama from an uncooperative Colombia, conquered the yellow fever and malaria that had plagued the French, and over a ten-year period created the largest and costliest engineering project the world had ever seen.

The Path between the Seas won the 1978 National Book Award as well as several important awards from historical associations. Several reviewers praised the book for its vivid portrayal of the many issues that surrounded the canal's construction. "There are scores of previous volumes on the subject," reported New York Times Book Review contributor Gaddis Smith, "but none is so thorough, readable, fair or graceful in the handling of myriad intricately connected elements: French national pride and humiliation, personal courage and corruption, disease and death, medical and engineering genius, political and financial chicanery, and the unsung contribution of tens of thousands of black laborers recruited from the West Indies to do the heavy work." McCullough, commented Walter Clemons in Newsweek, "is a storyteller with the capacity to steer readers through political, financial and engineering intricacies without fatigue or muddle. This is grand-scale, expert work." An audiobook of the The Path between the Seas was released in 2004.

In his next book, Mornings on Horseback, another National Book Award winner in 1982, McCullough examines the early years of the Panama Canal's greatest supporter, Theodore Roosevelt. Unlike many biographies of the Republican Roosevelt, however, McCullough's work encompasses the entire family: Theodore, Sr., philanthropic scion of an old New York Dutch clan; his wife, Martha ("Mittie") Bulloch, a Georgia belle whose family mansion may have been the inspiration for Tara in Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind; their daughters, Anna ("Bamie") and Corinne ("Conie"); and sons, Theodore, Jr. and Elliott. Moreover, in its depiction of the Roosevelts, Mornings on Horseback affords a glimpse of American society in the years following the Civil War, "a period that has always seemed remote and cartoonlike," explained James Lardner in the New Republic. "It introduces us to a collection of fascinating people and makes their society vivid, plausible, and even a tempting destination for anyone planning a trip back in time."

McCullough also breaks new ground by exploring neglected aspects of Theodore, Jr.'s youth, including his bouts of psychosomatic illness and his fascination with killing and preserving animals. As a child "Teddie" suffered from violent attacks of asthma, probably brought on by feelings of inadequacy, that occurred "almost invariably on a Saturday night [in order] to secure a Sunday with his father," reported John Leonard in the New York Times Book Review. McCullough notes that the boy's asthma disappeared as soon as he left home to begin studying at Harvard. Roosevelt's enchantment with shooting and the Wild West, the author suggests, stemmed in part from his mother's stories about the Old South and his relatives' exploits in the Confederate Army. McCullough combines these images to create a portrait of a man who, as Saturday Review contributor Gary Wills put it, "never felt more alive than when killing something."

McCullough next attempted to write a biography of the painter Pablo Picasso, but after only a few months' work, he developed such a loathing for the artist's personality that he abandoned the project. When an editor suggested that he take on the story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, McCullough immediately replied, "If I were going to do a twentieth-century President, I would do Harry Truman," according to New York Times Book Review contributor Lynn Karpen. Truman was the first president McCullough had ever seen in person. It happened in 1956, in New York City, where McCullough had just begun work as a staff member of the newly created Sports Illustrated magazine. "A small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk awaiting the Governor, who was attending a dinner party," McCullough told Karpen. "A limousine pulled up and out stepped … Harry Truman. My first thought was, 'My God, he's in color!'" Once McCullough started, Truman took ten years to finish. McCullough's dedication to his subject paid off. Truman, described by Time reviewer Walter Isaacson as a "loving and richly detailed megabiography," earned its author a Pulitzer Prize.

Truman was a plain man who never attended college and might never have left his family's farm if not for World War I. He served in Europe, then returned to his hometown of Independence, Missouri, to marry his longtime sweetheart, Bess Wallace—a woman whose family was convinced that she had married beneath her. Truman was a hard worker, yet he failed both as a farmer and as a haberdasher. He went into politics simply because he needed a job. A tenuous connection with Tom Pendergast, a powerful Democratic leader of the 1920s, led to Truman's appointment as a county judge and, eventually, a place in the U.S. Senate. When he stepped into the presidency upon Franklin Delano Roosevelt's death in 1945, he remarked that there were a million men better qualified for the job than him. Many Americans agreed with him. During his time in office, he was highly unpopular, but his stature has risen in the decades since his presidency. "He was intelligent. He worked hard, read widely, and was always willing to listen to ideas and advice…. The same plainness of manner and directness of speech that led so many to dismiss him as a 'little man' helped him win the deep respect, loyalty and affection of such figures as Winston Churchill, George Marshall and Dean Acheson," commented Alan Brinkley in the New York Times Book Review. "Perhaps most important, Mr. McCullough argues, he was a decent man with common sense."

McCullough chose to tell Truman's story in a plain, straightforward style that reflected that character of his subject. McCullough's deep admiration for Truman comes through in his book's pages, yet he provides an evenhanded portrait, according to Brinkley: "McCullough manages to keep Truman himself at the center of the story … rather than allowing him to become obscured by the complexity of events and institutions that surrounded him. And he deals openly with Truman's many mistakes and weaknesses as a leader."

Isaacson found that "McCullough's main weakness is one he shares with Truman: he occasionally fails to wrestle with the moral complexities of policy." Instead, he provides "a sense of historic sweep" and a "marvelous feel for history" that is based on "an appreciation of colorful tales and an insight into personalities. In this compelling saga of America's greatest common-man President, McCullough adds luster to an old-fashioned historical approach that is regaining respect: the sweeping narrative, filled with telling details and an appreciation of the role individuals play in shaping the world."

John Adams, one of the top-selling nonfiction works of 2001, brought new recognition to another president who had not been highly regarded previously. The first vice president and second president of the United States, Adams was an unpretentious man, yet was often considered conceited and overly ambitious; he also had a fiery temper, which made him some enemies, but so did his honesty and adherence to principle. Adams was overshadowed in his lifetime and after by other founding fathers, particularly the charismatic Thomas Jefferson, and indeed, McCullough considered writing a book about the relationship of Adams and Jefferson, who were alternately friends and adversaries. As he did his research, however, McCullough knew he had to focus on Adams. "I realized that something inside me was saying: Adams is your subject—I had to do a book about John Adams," he told Ronald Kovach, an interviewer for Writer. McCullough had a wealth of material on Adams, and the resulting book chronicles Adams's youth in a Massachusetts farming family, his rise as a lawyer, his firm convictions against slavery and for religious freedom, his growth into an activist for American independence, and his key actions as an American statesman—including negotiating a loan from the Netherlands to bolster the finances of the brand-new United States and his move as president to keep the nation out of war with France. The book is also a story of romantic and familial love, some critics observed, sensitively portraying Adams's passionate devotion to his strong-minded wife, Abigail, and the joy he took in being a father.

New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani described John Adams as "a lucid and compelling work that should do for Adams's reputation what Mr. McCullough's 1992 book, 'Truman,' did for Harry S Truman." She continued, "Like Truman, Adams is portrayed by Mr. McCullough as a scrupulously honest man, dedicated, hard-working and without pretense: a plain-spoken man who steered a remarkably steady course through a particularly turbulent time in the nation's history." Several other critics also saw similarities between Truman and Adams, and in McCullough's treatment of each man. "America's most beloved biographer, David McCullough, has plucked Adams from the historical haze, as he did Harry Truman, and produced another masterwork of storytelling that blends colorful narrative with sweeping insights," reported Walter Isaacson in Time, adding, "Though Adams had the same prickliness as Give-'Em-Hell Harry, he's just not quite as colorful." Happily, Isaacson related, McCullough does not try to make Adams something he was not: "Instead he shows how Adams' ability to be sensible and independent made him an important element in the firmament of talents that created a new nation."

Numerous other critics praised McCullough's work as well. Former U.S. defense secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, writing in Insight on the News, called the book "a labor of love and skill, assuring McCullough a prime position among our greatest historians…. There are few works of history or historical fiction that can match McCullough's descriptions of the daily lives and the all too human motives, quarrels, ambitions and dissension that had to be reconciled and agreed to before our revolution could succeed." USA Today commentator Gerald F. Kreyche said of John Adams, "It is a masterpiece, a contribution to the literature, and a must read for anyone interested in the birth of our nation." Book contributor Don McLeese noted that the biography "combines scholarly research with the readability of historical fiction" and that "McCullough writes of his subject with warmth and respect but not reverence."

Some reviewers found McCullough a bit too admiring of Adams, however. "McCullough's obvious zeal and respect for Adams does limit the depth of his study," maintained Thomas R. Eddlem in the New American. He added, "McCullough criticizes Adams only once, taking him to task for signing the tyrannical Alien and Sedition acts. Adams was also widely recognized in his day as vain and ambitious, but McCullough gives the reader little insight into how this reputation came to be…. The author leaves the impression that Adams' sense of self-worth was completely justifiable." Pauline Maier, critiquing for the New York Times Book Review, thought that "McCullough's reckoning all but ignores the irascibility that undermined Adams's reputation among his contemporaries." Adams emerges, she said, as "admirable but curiously flat," and she concluded that "the wonderfully congenial subject of McCullough's carefully researched, lovingly written biography is more consistently companionable, and also less interesting, than Adams was in his own time."

Commentary reviewer Richard A. Samuelson had a different reservation, remarking that "McCullough tends to gloss over those aspects of Adams's career that do not fit neatly into a personal narrative" and "though McCullough appreciates that Adams was often a profound political thinker and duly notes that he shone as a constitutional architect, the book provides no sustained discussion of Adams's ideas." On the other hand, Samuel-son saw "much to recommend in McCullough's vivid portrait of this underappreciated founding father" and called the book "a well-researched and highly readable account, enlivened by the anecdotal style and attention to detail that are the author's trademark." Eddlem, despite criticizing McCullough's admiration for his subject as a bit too keen, added that "generally, Mc-Cullough's affinity for Adams strengthens this book." And several commentators deemed the biography a well-rounded portrait of Adams and his times. McCullough, observed Kakutani, uses "a fluent narrative style that combines a novelist's sense of drama with a scholar's meticulous attention to the historical record" to provide "a palpable sense of the many perils attending the birth of the American nation" as well as "a sense of Adams's exuberant, conflicted, and thoroughly engaging personality."

In 2005 McCullough published 1776, a history of George Washington and several other significant generals and soldiers in the year the United States won its independence from Britain. A reviewer for American Heritage noted the book is a "splendid reminder of Washington's true stature." In a review of the audio-book, for which the author narrated his own text, a critic from Publishers Weekly observed, "McCullough proves that he is as equally adept at reading prose as he is at writing it."

In all his work McCullough emphasizes the value history has for modern Americans. "We're not being quite selfish enough if we don't know history, not that history is likely to repeat itself," McCullough told Robbins. "Besides, there is the matter of commiserating in the agonies and basking in the glories of our fellow human beings from long ago, of not being provincial, of opening our minds and hearts to generations once alive…. Why should we deny ourselves the chance to experience life in another time if its available to us? There is a wonderful world called the past, and for heavens sake don't miss it, because if you do you'll be denying yourself a big part of being alive."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Heritage, June-July, 2005, review of 1776, p. 14.

Book, May, 2001, Don McLeese, review of John Adams, p. 66.

Commentary, September, 2001, Richard A. Samuelson, review of John Adams, p. 75.

Insight on the News, July 23, 2001, Caspar W. Weinberger, review of John Adams, p. 27.

Journal of American History, June, 2003, John Howe, review of John Adams, p. 210.

Library Journal, June 1, 2004, Don Wismer, review of The Path between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914, p. 197.

New American, September 24, 2001, Thomas R. Eddlem, "Colossus of Independence," p. 27.

New Republic, July 4, 1981, James Lardner, review of Mornings On Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt; July 2, 2001, Sean Wilentz, "America Made Easy—McCullough, Adams, and the Decline of Popular History," p. 35.

Newsweek, June 13, 1977, Walter Clemons, review of The Path between the Seas; May 21, 2001, David Gates, "John Adams Is in the House: McCullough's Vivid Take on Our Second President," p. 58.

New York Times, April 24, 1968, Alden Whitman, review of The Johnstown Flood; May 22, 2001, Michiko Kakutani, "Rediscovering John Adams: The Founder that Time Forgot," p. E1.

New York Times Book Review, June 19, 1977, Gaddis Smith, review of The Path between the Seas; July 26, 1981, John Leonard, review of Mornings On Horseback; June 21, 1992, Alan Brinkley, review of Truman, p. 1; June 21, 1992, Lynn Karpen, interview with McCullough, p. 19; May 27, 2001, Pauline Maier, "Plain Speaking," p. 9.

Publishers Weekly, April 2, 2001, review of John Adams, p. 47, and Edward Nawotka, "PW Talks with David McCullough," p. 48; July 11, 2005, audio-book review of 1776, p. 90.

Saturday Review, September 30, 1972, Justin Kaplan, review of The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge; June, 1981, Gary Wills, review of Mornings On Horseback.

Time, June 29, 1992, Walter Isaacson, review of Truman, p. 80; May 28, 2001, Walter Isaacson, "Best Supporting Actor: David McCullough's John Adams Shows the Real Drama of Revolutionary Times," p. 88.

Tribune-Review (Pittsburgh, PA), November 11, 1984, Richard Robbins, review of The Path between the Seas and Mornings on Horseback.

USA Today, November, 2001, Gerald F. Kreyche, review of John Adams, p. 81.

Washington Monthly, May, 2001, Michael Waldman, review of John Adams, p. 58.

Washington Post Book World, October 1, 1972, L.J. Davis, review of The Great Bridge.

Writer, October, 2001, Ronald Kovach, "David McCullough on the Art of Biography," p. 32.