summary of the pioneers by david mccullough

While the clamorous popular culture races on, the American past is slipping away, out of sight and out of mind. “It has been coming on for a long time,” McCullough warned, “like a creeping disease, eating away at the national memory. The essay reflects his love for history and the importance that McCullough attached to history education, but it also highlighted his concern that, “We … are raising a new generation of Americans, who to an alarming degree, are historically illiterate.” It is a subject that McCullough, who covered a broad swath of American history, including Pulitzer-Prize-winning biographies of presidents Harry Truman and John Adams, returned to regularly. McCullough wrote this in his essay “ Why History?” published in 1995. 'It enlarges and intensifies the experience of being alive, like poetry and art or music.” “History, really, is an extension of life,' McCullough wrote. The book sparked my imagination and, even after 608 pages, left me wanting to know more. McCullough conveyed the sights, sounds and smells of 19th-century New York City, from the depths of the bridge’s foundations, below the East River, to the laying of the suspension cables. McCullough made the bridge the central character of the book - an extension of the vision of engineers John Roebling and his son Washington Roebling, and the countless workers who labored and died during its construction. My favorite book remains 'The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge,' published in 1972. (John Lamparski/Getty Images)ĭavid McCullough, who died this week, introduced generations of readers to the joy and excitement of history.

David McCullough signs copies of his book 'The Pioneers' at Barnes & Noble Union Square on in New York City.

Summary of the pioneers by david mccullough