David mccullough death

David McCullough was an author, historian, lecturer, and former editor at American Heritage. He was a two-time winner of thePulitzer Prize, theNational Book Award, and Francis Parkman Prizes. He has also earned theLos Angeles TimesBook Award, New York Public Library's Literary Lion Award, theSaint Louis Literary Awardfrom the Saint Louis UniversityLibrary Associates, and thePresidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. He was awarded more than 40 honorary degrees including from theEastern Nazarene Collegein John Adams' hometown ofQuincy, Massachusetts.

While working atAmerican Heritage as an editor and writer, McCullough wrote in his spare time. The Johnstown Flood, a chronicle of one of theworst flood disastersin United States history, was published in 1968 to high praise by critics. John Leonard, ofThe New York Times, said of McCullough, "We have no better social historian”. He decided to become a full-time writer, encouraged by his wife Rosalee.

Other books authored by McCullough includeThe Path Between the Seas (1977), 1776(2005), In the Dark Streets Shineth: A 1941 Christmas Eve Story (2010), The Greater Journey (2011),andThe Wright Brothers (2015).His most recent book isThe American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For(2017).

McCullough has also narrated numerous documentaries directed byKen Burns, includingEmmy Awardwinning The Civil War,Academy Award-nominated Brooklyn Bridge,Liberty, andThe Congress.

His two Pulitzer Prize-winning books,Truman,andJohn Adams, were adapted byHBOinto aTV filmand aminiseries, respectively.

The Statue of Liberty has been glorified, romanticized, trivialized, and over-publicized. But the idea of “Liberty Enlightening the World” endures.

When John Adams set out with his little son on a perilous voyage early in 1778, he was full of misgivings. He had every right to be worried, but the journey turned out to be the adventure of his life—and a revelation of his essential character.

Thus did Franklin Roosevelt characterize the man who was to be his running mate in 1944 and, as everyone at the astonishing Democratic Convention knew, almost certainly the next president. Here is FDR at his most devious, Harry Truman at the pivot of his career, and the old party-boss system at its zenith.

A noted historian’s very personal tour of the city where so much of the American past took shape, with excursions into institutions famous and obscure, the archives that are the nation’s memory, and the haunts of some noble ghosts.

The Big Ditch had so far been a colossal flop, and Teddy Roosevelt desperately needed an engineering genius who could take over the job and “make the dirt fly.” The answer was not the famous Goethals, but a man whom history has forgotten.

The wrecker’s ball swings in every city in the land, and memorable edifices of all kinds are coming down at a steady clip.

Newport it was not; but to judge by its summertime throngs, its religious fervor, and the exuberance of its architecture, there was nothing to match the likes of the “Cottage City of America.”

In the hills above Johnstown, the old South Fork dam had failed. Down the Little Conemaugh came the torrent, sweeping away everything in its path

One thing was clear through the rain and the mist: America’s enthusiasm for Miss Liberty matched her colossal dimensions

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