David McCullough

David McCullough (2007)

David Gaub McCullough (born July 7, 1933 in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania ) is an American historian , biographer , storyteller and lecturer .

Life

David Gaub McCullough is the son of Ruth Rankin and Christian Hax McCullough. He is of Irish-Scottish descent and grew up with his three brothers in his hometown of Pittsburgh. He lives in Boston , Massachusetts and has been married to Rosalee Ingram Barnes McCullough, whom he has known since he was 17, since 1954. The couple have five children and 18 grandchildren. His son David Jr., a teacher at Wellesley High School , gained national and international fame in 2012 when he admonished his students in his graduation speech that they were nothing special.

Career

McCullough attended Linden Avenue Grade School and the Shady Side Academy . From 1951 he studied English at Yale University , where people such as John O'Hara , John Hersey , Robert Penn Warren , Brendan Gill and Thornton Wilder taught. During his student days he became a member of the Skull & Bones Association . He also volunteered at Time , Life , the United States Information Agency and the American Heritage . McCullough graduated with honors in English literature in 1955 with a few art courses . He then trained as a journalist at Sports Illustrated in New York City and worked for 12 years as an editor at the United States Information Agency in Washington, DC and the American Heritage .

While at Heritage, he worked on his first non-fiction book for over three years, which was published in 1968 under the title The Johnstown Flood . The chronicle of the breakage of the South Fork Dam and the flooding of the city of Jamestown , Pennsylvania with over 2209 people killed, received critical acclaim. After the success of the first book, two publishers offered him to write about the Great Chicago Fire and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake . Instead, he decided to write about the Brooklyn Bridge and the construction of the Panama Canal . Both The Great Bridge (1972) and The Path Between the Seas (1977) both received critical acclaim. For the latter, he was awarded the National Book Award , Francis Parkman Prize , Cornelius Ryan Award and Samuel Eliot Morison Award in 1978 . It is also the only book that he has published in German. In 1978 Scherz Verlag published the book under the title They divided the earth: Adventure and history of the last and greatest pioneering act, the building of the Panama Canal . In late 1977 McCullough traveled to Washington, where he recommended to US President Jimmy Carter and the United States Senate that they relinquish control of the Canal. According to Carter, the Torrijos-Carter contracts would never have come about had the book not existed.

He then devoted himself to the biographies and published his first with Mornings on Horseback in 1981 about the 26th President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt . He described the years of Roosevelt's life from 1869 to 1886. He won his second National Book Award , as well as the Los Angeles Times Prize for Biography and the New York Public Library Literary Lion Award . His second biography wasn't published until 11 years later. With Truman , McCullough describes the life story of US President Harry S. Truman and was honored for his first Pulitzer Prize for best biography or autobiography . The book itself was filmed by HBO in 1995 under the title Truman - The Man Who Made History, with Gary Sinise in the lead role.

He was also awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his subsequent biography, John Adams, about US President John Adams , who was preceded by seven years of working hours. It became one of the fastest-selling non-fiction books in history. It was also filmed again by HBO. This time Paul Giamatti starred in a seven episode mini-series John Adams - Freedom for America . Four years later, in 2005, his fourth biography appeared in 1776 , which focuses on George Washington and the complications of the composition of the army and other difficulties of the American Revolutionary War . The book was printed with an initial circulation of 1.25 million and was at the top of the bestseller list for weeks. A film adaptation as a miniseries was also considered. He also wanted to write a sequel to the book. However, in 2011, The Greater Journey was a book about Americans, including Mark Twain and Samuel Morse , who emigrated to Paris , France between 1830 and 1900 .

Awards

McCullough was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006, the highest civilian honor in the United States . In 1995 he was awarded the Medal for Distinguished Contribution , a prize for life's work, by the National Book Foundation . He has also been awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice, the National Book Award twice and the Francis Parkman Prize twice. For his services he was also awarded over 40 honorary degrees by various institutions and universities.

In 1993, McCullough was first elected to Yale University's John Hersey Lecture at Yale University, which changes annually . In 1994 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 2004 to the American Philosophical Society and in 2006 to the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

His books have been translated into ten languages ​​and have sold over nine million copies.

plant

• The Johnstown Flood (1968)
• The Great Bridge. The epic story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge (1972)
• The Path Between the Seas. The creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914 , Simon and Schuster 1977
  • They divided the earth: adventure and history of the last and greatest pioneering act, the construction of the Panama Canal , Scherz Verlag , Zurich 1978
• Mornings on Horseback. The story of an extraordinary family, a vanished way of life and the unique child who became Theodore Roosevelt (1981)
• Brave Companions. Portraits in History , Simon and Schuster 1992
• Truman , Simon and Schuster 1993
• John Adams , Simon and Schuster 2001
• 1776. America and Britain at War (2005)
• In the Dark Streets Shineth: A 1941 Christmas Eve Story (2010)
• The Greater Journey. Americans in Paris , Simon and Schuster 2011
• The Wright Brothers , Simon and Schuster 2015

Filmography

David McCullough has worked as a narrator in several Oscar-nominated documentaries, series and feature films since the early 1980s .

• 1981: Brooklyn Bridge
• 1984: The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God
• 1985: The Statue of Liberty
• 1985: Huey Long
• 1990: The American Civil War ( The Civil War , documentary series, nine episodes)
• 1991: Coney Island
• 1992: The Donner Party
• 1994: D-Day Remembered
• 2000: Napoleon-PBS Empires Special
• 2003: Seabiscuit - With the will to succeed ( Seabiscuit )

Web links

• David McCullough in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Literature by and about David McCullough in the catalog of the German National Library
• David McCullough at charlierose.com

Individual evidence

1. ↑ David McCullough . Smithsonian Institution . Archived from the original on April 18, 2009. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved January 3, 2009. 
2. ^ Teacher defends "You're not special" speech , CBS News . June 11, 2012. Retrieved June 20, 2012. 
3. ↑ "You are nothing special!" , spiegel.de
4. ^ Brian Bolduc: Don't Know Much about History . In: The Wall Street Journal , June 18, 2001. Retrieved June 18, 2011. 
5. ^ Johnstown Flood: Reviews and Praise . ElectricEggplant. Retrieved April 23, 2008.
6. ^ Samuel Eliot Morison Award 1978 . AmericanHeritage.com. Archived from the original on September 29, 2007. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved April 24, 2008. 
7. ↑ ^{a b} Edward Guthmann: Best-selling author David McCullough writes his stories from the inside out . In: San Francisco Chronicle , June 27, 2005. Retrieved May 2, 2008. 
8. ↑ Bob Hoover: David McCullough: America's historian, Pittsburgh son . In: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , December 30, 2001. Retrieved April 21, 2008. 
9. ^ Jerome L Sherman: Presidential biographer gets presidential medal . In: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , December 16, 2006. Retrieved December 18, 2006. 
10. ↑ Gal Tziperman Lotan: McCullough tells Eastern Nazarene graduates Their education is just beginning . In: The Patriot Ledger , May 17th, 2009. Archived from the original on August 8th, 2009 Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved May 20, 2009.  
11. ↑ "A Life in Writing John Hersey, 1914–1993" ( Memento of the original from October 18, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . The Yale Alumni Magazine. October, 1993.  
12. ^ Member History: David McCullough. American Philosophical Society, accessed December 16, 2018 . 
13. ↑ Academy Members. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed January 18, 2019 . 
14. ↑ Charlie Rose: David McCullough . In: The Charlie Rose Show . March 21, 2008. Archived from the original on April 30, 2008. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved November 10, 2012.