Historian David McCullough: history ought to be a source of pleasure

It's the birthday of historian and author David McCullough, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1933). His first love was art, but when he was an undergraduate at Yale, the faculty included Brendan Gill, John Hersey, Robert Penn Warren, and Thornton Wilder, so eventually he started to think about life as a writer. A New York Times critic once said McCullough was "incapable of writing a page of bad prose," although some academic historians remain unimpressed and have criticized him for being a "popularizer" and putting too much narrative in his books. Nevertheless, they're popular among readers and also prize committees: He's been awarded two Pulitzers, two National Book Awards, and several others.

He enjoys immersing himself in the era and culture he's writing about. "The years writing John Adams [2001] and 1776 [2005] have been the most exhilarating, happiest years of my writing life," he said in an interview with Powells.com. "I had never ventured into the 18th century before, never set foot in it. I told my wife the other day that I might never come back. I love it."

"To me, history ought to be a source of pleasure," he told National Endowment for the Humanities chair Bruce Cole. "It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me, it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is."

His books include Truman (1992), John Adams (2001), 1776 (2005), The Greater Journey (2011), and his most recent, The Wright Brothers (2015), which was published in May.

- Writer's Almanac