David McCullough - Historian and Author (1933 - 2022)

[librarian]

RIP, Sir

 

There shall be a display tomorrow at the Library. Thank you for all your great works...

Edited August 8, 2022 by librarian
wanted to add more info.

[blueschica]

RIP, Mr. McCullough.   He was from Pittsburgh,  and such a great writer.  If you are not interested in his presidential books,  The Great Bridge and The Johnstown Flood are wonderful reads. I stayed up late reading The Great Bridge (Brooklyn Bridge construction) one night and I told my husband the next day, we must go see this! The book was that well written. (We went shortly after that.) RIP, your writing will be missed!

[dream & vapour]

Well heck.  An American treasure and historical literature promontory.

 

His last completed work, The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West, is a fine note upon which to finish.  I recall watching his discussion of this work on C-SPAN during a Sunday morning in the summer of 2019: https://www.c-span.org/video/?460340-1/david-mccullough-discusses-the-pioneers

 

See also: David McCullough - The Pioneers | Marietta College

 

On a side note:  Another book on this historical subject which you might consider if so inclined is A Journey to Ohio in 1810: as recorded in the journal of Margaret Van Horn Dwight.  It's a travel diary written by the teenage Margaret, presenting a straightforward account of her experience.  It's a quick read, being under seventy pages.  (Edited by historian Max Farrand, who was husband of Beatrix Jones Farrand, pioneering woman in the world of landscape architecture.)

[dream & vapour]

4 hours ago, blueschica said:

RIP, Mr. McCullough.   He was from Pittsburgh,  and such a great writer.  If you are not interested in his presidential books,  The Great Bridge and The Johnstown Flood are wonderful reads. I stayed up late reading The Great Bridge (Brooklyn Bridge construction) one night and I told my husband the next day, we must go see this! The book was that well written. (We went shortly after that.) RIP, your writing will be missed!

Here's David fuming eloquently about the past prospect of an 18-story building being raised adjacent to the Brooklyn Bridge (it wasn't built): 

 

 

Hart Crane would have certainly agreed.

[zepphead]

I remember him from the books Truman and The Wright Brothers. I also remember him narrating the film Seabiscuit, based on the career of the famous US racehorse.

 

RIP David.

[blueschica]

12 hours ago, dream & vapour said:

Well heck.  An American treasure and historical literature promontory.

 

His last completed work, The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West, is a fine note upon which to finish.  I recall watching his discussion of this work on C-SPAN during a Sunday morning in the summer of 2019: https://www.c-span.org/video/?460340-1/david-mccullough-discusses-the-pioneers

 

See also: David McCullough - The Pioneers | Marietta College

 

On a side note:  Another book on this historical subject which you might consider if so inclined is A Journey to Ohio in 1810: as recorded in the journal of Margaret Van Horn Dwight.  It's a travel diary written by the teenage Margaret, presenting a straightforward account of her experience.  It's a quick read, being under seventy pages.  (Edited by historian Max Farrand, who was husband of Beatrix Jones Farrand, pioneering woman in the world of landscape architecture.)

 

11 hours ago, dream & vapour said:

Here's David fuming eloquently about the past prospect of an 18-story building being raised adjacent to the Brooklyn Bridge (it wasn't built): 

 

 

Hart Crane would have certainly agreed.

Thank you for the mention of the journal! I'll have to look for it. I enjoyed reading The Pioneers quite a bit (I was doing Ancestry research at the time and thought I had ancestors who had settled in the area. That was incorrect but my husband had a few in that area.)  I hadn't thought of the Hart Crane poem in ages. I looked it up and it is so beautifully written, great to see again. I do have kind of a thing for the Brooklyn Bridge 

and my family sometimes buys me the odd puzzle, or earrings  with the Bridge on them!