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.)