David McCullough

David McCullough was an award-winning American author and TV host. McCullough won Pulitzer Prizes for two presidential biographies, Truman (1992) and John Adam (2001). He received National Book Awards for The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal (1977) and Mornings on Horseback (1981), about the young Theodore Roosevelt and his family.

Critics acclaimed David McCullough as a “master of the art of narrative history,” and “a matchless writer.” He is twice the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, twice the winner of the National Book Award, and has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award.

David McCullough was born in Pittsburgh in 1933. He graduated from Yale with honors in English Literature.

David McCullough's debut as an author was with his book The Johnstown Flood, which came out in 1968. The book tells the story of the catastrophic flood in Pennsylvania in 1889. The destruction in the town killed more than 2,200 people. The Johnstown Floo was a critical success and helped establish McCullough as a renowned author of narrative nonfiction.

McCullough’s other books include The Great Bridge, The Path Between the Seas, Mornings on Horseback, Brave Companions, and Truman. His work has been translated and published worldwide, and, as may be said of few writers, none of his books has ever been out of print.

David McCullough has also won the Francis Parkman Prize twice, and he has been honored by the National Book Foundation Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award, the National Humanities Medal, and the Gold Medal for Biography given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has received fifty-two honorary degrees.

In 2013, in his honor, the city of Pittsburgh, his hometown, renamed its landmark 16th Street Bridge over the Allegheny River the David McCullough Bridge. More recently, in September 2014, he was named an Officer of the Legion of Honor by decree of the President of the Republic of France.

In a crowded, productive career, he has been an editor, teacher, lecturer, and familiar presence on public television—as host of Smithsonian World, The American Experience, and narrator of numerous documentaries, including Ken Burns’s The Civil War. He is also the voice of the narrator in the movie Seabiscuit.

His work, John Adams, published in 2001, remains one of the most praised and widely read American biographies of all time. Also, John Adams, the seven-part mini-series on HBO produced by Tom Hanks, was one of the most acclaimed and talked about television events of recent years.

A gifted speaker, Mr. McCullough has lectured in all parts of the country and abroad, as well as at the White House. He was also one of the few private citizens to speak before a joint session of Congress.

David McCullough and his wife, Rosalee Barnes McCullough, had five children and nineteen grandchildren. McCullough was an avid reader and traveler and has enjoyed a lifelong interest in art and architecture. He was also a devoted painter.

David McCullough died at his home in Hingham, southeast of Boston. He was 89.