History Matters

Pulitzer Prize winner McCullough (John Adams), who died in 2022, extols the importance and craft of writing history in this resonant collection of 20 speeches, essays, and interviews selected by his daughter Dorie McCullough Lawson and his longtime researcher Michael Hill. Some of the pieces play on historiographical themes, like the human ingenuity that built the Golden Gate Bridge, and the centrality of luck, as seen in the sudden fog that hid the Continental Army long enough to escape from the Redcoats across the East River at the Battle of Brooklyn. Several entries proffer practical advice for aspiring writers, such as the importance of cultivating discipline--"four pages a day" was the best advice he says he ever got. At the heart of the volume are McCullough's biographical sketches of historical figures, including the painter Thomas Eakins, Uncle Tom's Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe, and George Washington. Though these are mostly minor, off-the-cuff pieces, the collection displays McCullough's eye for engrossing anecdotes and ebullient prose ("History should not ever be dull," he declares). The historian's admirers will find this an enjoyable and warmhearted valedictory hymn to the American spirit. (Sept.)

Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past. McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter ("I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever"), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: "Indifference to history isn't just ignorant, it's rude," he thunders. "It's a form of ingratitude." There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon "has no character and no convictions," he opined, Kennedy "is appealing to our best instincts." McCullough allows that it wasn't the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, "he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me." Some of McCullough's appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who's been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: "I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time." A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

1. Why History? WHY HISTORY? In 1995, DMcC was honored with the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Over the course of his lifetime, he was awarded fifty-six honorary degrees and more than 125 awards, including the Pulitzer Prize twice, the National Book Award twice, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He met each and every recognition with delight and gratitude. When he received this overarching award for contribution to the literary world of his country, he was honored indeed. These are his remarks delivered at the awards ceremony. History shows us how to behave. History teaches, reinforces what we believe in, what we stand for, and what we ought to be willing to stand up for. History is--or should be--the bedrock of patriotism, not the chest-pounding kind of patriotism but the real thing, love of country. At their core, the lessons of history are largely lessons in appreciation. Everything we have, all our great institutions, hospitals, universities, libraries, cities, our laws, our music, art, poetry, our freedoms, everything exists because somebody went before us and did the hard work, provided the creative energy, provided the money, provided the belief. Do we disregard that? Indifference to history isn't just ignorant, it's rude. It's a form of ingratitude. I'm convinced that history encourages, as nothing else does, a sense of proportion about life, gives us a sense of the relative scale of our own brief time on earth and how valuable that is. What history teaches, it teaches mainly by example. It inspires courage and tolerance. It encourages a sense of humor. It is an aid to navigation in perilous times. We are living now in an era of momentous change, of huge transitions in all aspects of life--nationwide and worldwide--and this creates great pressures and tensions. But history shows that times of change are the times when we are most likely to learn. This nation was founded on change. We should embrace the possibilities in these exciting times and hold to a steady course, because we have a sense of navigation, a sense of what we've been through in times past and who we are. Think how tough our predecessors were. Think what they had been through. There's no one who hasn't an ancestor who went through some form of hell. Churchill in his great speech in the darkest hours of the Second World War, when he crossed the Atlantic, reminded us, "We haven't journeyed this far because we are made of sugar candy." Now, history isn't just good for you in a civic way. It isn't just something you take to be a better citizen. It does do that, and that in itself would be reason enough to stress its importance. "Any nation that expects to be ignorant and free," Jefferson said, "expects what never was and never will be." And if the gap between the educated and the uneducated in America continues to grow as it has in our time, as fast as or faster than the gap between the rich and the poor, the gap between the educated and the uneducated is going to be of greater consequence and the more serious threat to our way of life. We must not, by any means, misunderstand that. But, I think, what it really comes down to is that history is an extension of life. It both enlarges and intensifies the experience of being alive. It's like poetry and art. Or music. And it's ours, to enjoy . If we deny our children that enjoyment, that adventure in the larger time among the greater part of the human experience, we're cheating them out of a full life. There's no secret to making history come alive. Barbara Tuchman said it perfectly: "Tell stories." The pull, the appeal, is irresistible, because history is about two of the greatest of all mysteries--time and human nature. How lucky we are. How lucky we are to enjoy in our work and in our lives the possibilities, the precision and reach, the glories of the English language. How lucky we are, how very lucky we are, to live in this great country, to be Americans--Americans all. Excerpted from History Matters by David McCullough All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.