"History Mattters" by David McCullough - A Review

 As an historian, David McCullough would be certain to remember that this day is the 82^ndanniversary of D-Day. On that morning, while all hoped for success, no one involved could know the outcome. Fifty thousand highly trained German troops manned defensive positions, overlooking the beaches at Normandy. Approximately 155,000 allied soldiers, including airborne troops, landed in France that day. A little over 4,000 were killed and about 6,000 were wounded.

 

From the perspective of time, we know what a success the operation was, but of course none of the men involved could see the future. What we now know is that we – the West and all those alive then and born since – are the beneficiaries of the courage and skill of those men. We cannot know the fear those soldiers and sailors felt, but we should appreciate the principles for which they sacrificed so much. Our debt of gratitude can never be fully re-paid, but we should never forget what they did on the beaches and fields in northern France that June day, eighty-two years ago.   

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

History Matters, David McCullough

June 6, 2026

 

“The marvelous thing about the past is whenever

you reach down into it, all you find is life.”

                                                                                                                David McCullough

                                                                                                                Address, National Preservation Conference

                                                                                                                San Francisco, 1991

 

David McCullough, a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Price and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, died at 89 in 2022. Even in death we are recipients of his wisdom. His daughter Dorie McCullough Lawson and his researcher Michael Hill gathered a selection of unpublished essays, speeches, tributes and interviews. History Matters is for those with a love for history and an appetite for learning. 

 

The book is short (168 pages) and divided into four parts. David McCullough was a polymath; he has offered us a potpourri, ranging from history and books to writing, art and literature. A few samples:

 

In an address to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1991, he said: “...but what I really think draws us to history, the pull of the past, is change. It is what is new, not what is old. And change is the essence of life.” In a 1995 talk at the Library of Congress: “The characters in Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War and War and Remembrance are real because they are in our hearts.” And at Dartmouth College in 2012, he told the audience: “Write to make music. Don’t just pound out notes.” In 1985, Mr. McCullough hosted a documentary on the artist Thomas Eakins, for which he wrote an essay: “Eakins...was painting not for the moment, or even for his own generation...He saw his paintings as an enduring historical record.” At the National Book Festival in 2002, he mentioned a number of his favorite books: A Death in the Family by James Agee, My Antonia by Willa Cather, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana, and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. It is a list that most of us would gain from reading, or re-reading.

 

While readers of McCullough are accustomed to his histories of the Panama Canal, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Johnstown Flood and biographies of John Adams, Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman, readers of this book are presented with a collection of short essays, including synopses on George Washington, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Paul Horgan.

 

The Pulitzer Prize winning author and historian Jon Meacham wrote the foreword. He cites McCullough’s belief that history is “a story, an unfolding drama in which the men and women of a given moment could not know how everything turned out – whether the waters would recede, or whether the plane would fly, or whether the battle would be won.” It is that sense of almost childish wonder that permeates David McCullough’s published works, and which fills us with joy in this collection.

"the Pioneers," by David McCullough

Sydney M. Williams

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Burrowing into Books

“The Pioneers” David McCullough

August 4, 2019

“Now, all at once, almost unimaginably, it had acquired 265,878 square miles

of unbroken wilderness, thus doubling the size of the United States.”

                                                                                    The Pioneers, David McCullough

History allows us to marvel at our own time with renewed perspectives. For example, how rich and easy our lives are – despite a freshman Congresswoman telling a Newsweek interviewer that “an entire generation [millennials] came of age and never saw American prosperity”– compared to the hardships experienced by early pioneers, like those along the Ohio River.

David McCullough, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, in his new book, follows several families, including those of Manasseh Cutler and his two sons, Ephraim and Jervis, along with Joseph Barker and Samuel Hildreth, from the founding of the Ohio Company in 1784, through the passage of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787, to 1863, when the Territory had become five states and all the founders were dead. 

In 1783, as a condition for signing the Treaty of Paris, John Adams insisted that Britain cede rights to what was called the Northwest Territory, an area west of Pennsylvania, east of the Mississippi River, north of the Ohio River and south of British Canada. It consisted of 265,878 square miles – an area larger than France, an area from which five states would eventually be carved: Ohio (1803), Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), Michigan (1837) and Wisconsin (1848). In 1800, the U.S. Census recorded a population of 51,000 in the Territory. By 1860, those five states had a population of seven million.

The land they first settled in 1788, where the Muskingum River meets the Ohio, became the town of Marietta. It was named after the French Queen, Marie Antoinette. Marietta was settled by forty-eight pioneers led by General Rufus Putnam, a Revolutionary War veteran and friend of George Washington. It is in the southeastern part of what is now Ohio, bordering on Virginia (now West Virginia). The passage of the Northwest Ordinance gave ownership of the land to the U.S. government which, via the Ohio Company, sold land to pioneers, including Revolutionary War veterans – men, as Joseph Barker later wrote, who “had been disciplined to obey, and learned the advantage of subordination to law and good behavior in promoting the prosperity of themselves and the rest of mankind.” Traits needed by those who would venture west included, Mr. McCullough writes: “fortitude, perseverance, patience, resolution and good sense.”

The Northwest Ordinance, as prepared by Manasseh Cutler, the hero of Mr. McCullough’s book, had stipulated that the Territory be (and remain) slave free. His son Ephraim, as a state legislator, later ensured that Ohio stayed slave free. While today that stipulation sounds obvious, at the time the Ordinance was enacted there were slaves in all of the thirteen original states.

The earliest pioneers suffered hardships we can barely imagine: Indian attacks, disease (including the devastating attack of influenza in 1807 when more than 70 people in Marietta died, earthquakes, wolves, President Jefferson’s embargo act, floods, freezing winters (the “Starving Year” of 1790) and accidents. Yet they endured. They had arrived, newly liberated from England, but with the benefit of English laws and customs, the concept of representative government and a sense of responsibility and accountability. Liberal ideals of the Founders made their way into the Ordinance, Article III of which read: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” The pioneers were interested in education and historic preservation, as could be seen in their preserving sacred Indian burial grounds, some of which dated back almost 2000 years. 

The years covered in this history incorporate the first stages of the industrial revolution. Robert Fulton’s steamboat was developed in 1807. In 1825, the 363-mile long Erie Canal was opened, and soon steamships began to ply lakes and rivers, which eased upstream trips – no more “bushwhacking.” By the end of the 1840s, trains were running between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia by way of Harrisburg. The first settlers struggled across the Appalachians, on foot, with horses or oxen, struggling with carts and wagons. Within two generations canals, steamships and trains had shortened a two-month trip to a few days, allowing visits from Aaron Burr, Alexis de Tocqueville, Frances Trollope and Charles Dickens, among others.

The subtitle of Mr. McCullough’s book reads: “The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West.” Therein lies his most important message – how the ideals laid out in the Declaration of Independence, laws embedded in our Constitution and the desire to create educational institutions came west. With them – and because of them – settlers were able to produce communities where people lived harmoniously on farms and in towns and cities, where civilization prospered. A surprising number of pioneers had been educated at Yale and Harvard, and were interested in the arts, literature, writing, sciences and the environment. Institutions like Marietta College and the University of Ohio are their legacy.

There has been some silly criticism of Mr. McCullough, implying he is not “woke,” suggesting he ignored the plight of the Native Americans whose ancestors inhabited these lands for thousands of years. While I am certain that Mr. McCullough does not excuse the abysmal treatment of Native Americans, that was not the purpose of this book. Besides which, it is unfair to apply today’s moral standards when judging the actions of individuals who lived two hundred and thirty years ago. As well, we should keep in mind that conflict was inevitable between nomadic, hunter-gather North American Indian tribes and pioneers of European heritage who wanted to build and settle into towns and cities and to cultivate the land. 

The purpose of the book was to relate the remarkable story of how a handful of dedicated pioneers turned a wilderness of dense, dark forests into productive fields and orchards, how they harnessed rivers to build mills, established governments, schools, churches and hospitals, how they built towns and cities where a diverse people lived happily and in peace – and how integral to the whole are all of our separate parts.

History allows us to open windows, in this case onto the pioneer spirit that drove aspirant Americans to a new frontier. A reading of The Pioneersprovides perspective of our collective pasts, permits an understanding of who we are, and offers clues as to where we might be heading. 

Selective Readings - "The American Spirit," David McCullough - "Cocoa Beach," Beatriz Williams

Sydney M. Williams

Burrowing into Books

Reviews of Selective Readings

                                                                                                                                           July 5, 2017

“The American Spirit”

David McCullough

“History…is human. It is about people, and they speak across the years.”

                                                                                                            David McCullough

Introduction

The American Spirit

“Washington,” McCullough tells us in a speech at Ohio University, “…regretted all his life that he never had the advantage of a formal education.” But he understood its importance. He once wrote: “knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.” David McCullough exudes that sentiment.

Mr. McCullough, who has no advanced degrees in history and has never been employed as a professor – he has a bachelor’s in English literature from Yale – is rightly considered one of our foremost historians. He is the author of ten books, ranging from “The Johnstown Flood” to “The Wright Brothers.” He has written on John Adams, Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman and the Panama Canal.

“The American Spirit” comprises speeches given over twenty-seven years. The first is to a joint session of Congress, titled “Simon Willard’s Clock.” The last, in 2016, again in Washington, D.C., this time at the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, and titled “A Building Like No Other,” is a discussion of the Capitol building. In between are thirteen addresses to colleges, universities and other groups.

Mr. McCullough takes an unvarnished look at our past, not through rose-colored glasses or via a white-washed version to meet today’s standards, but history as it was. While the emphasis is deservedly on the honor and glory of people and the nation, he does not shy from shame. 

While there is no over-riding theme, his speeches celebrate the men and women and the events in which they were involved, all of which make up our common history. He reminds students at Ohio University in 2004 that history is the study of people living in what was their present: “No one lived in the past, only the present.” Lincoln knew his Emancipation Proclamation was the right thing to do, but it is only us, a hundred and fifty years later, who can see the fruits of his wisdom and efforts. “Let us not look down on anyone from the past,” he told students at Dickenson, “for not having the benefit of what we know.” He has a rare ability to link historical figures. For example, in a speech at Lafayette College commemorating the 250^th birthday of the Marquis de Lafayette, he segues from Lafayette to Cole Porter, and John Singer Sargent to Thomas Jefferson. Paris is the common denominator.

As much as anything, he emphasizes education, reading, and on why me must continue to learn. “Make the love of learning central to your life,” he tells students at Boston College. “What a difference it can mean.” In a gesture that particularly appeals to me, Mr. McCullough dedicates this book to his nineteen grandchildren, a loving legacy to those lucky children who carry within them the genes of a man who loves learning and who is still, after all these years, awed by the landscape that is our past.

“Cocoa Beach”

Beatriz Williams

“The innocent ones always understand more than you think.”

                                                                                                            Beatriz Williams

Chapter 27, page 311

                                                                                                            Cocoa Beach  

A captivating aspect of Beatriz’s novels – reminiscent of Anthony Trollope – is how a minor character in one novel reappears in a major (or a minor) role in another. Virginia Fortescue Fitzwilliam had a minor role as the older sister of Sophie in A Certain Age; she returns in this novel as its heroine. Geneva (Gin) Kelly, a central character in The Wicked City, appears in a veiled scene at the end of Cocoa Beach.

Cocoa Beach, Beatriz’s eighth novel, is a story of romance, family, mystery, war (the First World War), murder, prohibition and rum-running. We follow Virginia, who left New York City in 1917 because of an oppressive father about whom she had doubts, to drive ambulances in France. There she meets Captain Simon Fitzwilliam, a surgeon in the British army, whom she marries in 1919 and with whom she has a baby. She leaves her husband for reasons readers will learn. Three years later, we meet her again in Cocoa Beach, Florida where she has gone, with her three-year-old daughter, as apparent heir to her estranged husband’s businesses. He appears to have died in what might not have been an accident. Death plays a role in the book, beyond the destruction she saw in France. Her mother, for example, had been murdered ten years earlier. “I came to understand that we living people exist in this physical realm, and the departed spirits belong solely to the eternal one.”

Beatriz brings alive the time-periods of which she writes – in this case, battle fields in France; England and France, victorious but exhausted by four years of war; and Florida, energetic and developing, and rife with rum-runners. She writes of how the modern era was born from the ashes of that world war, and she incorporates historical figures, like Carl Fisher, manufacturer of the acetylene headlight and developer of Miami Beach.

The novel twists and turns toward its surprising conclusion, leading all but the most astute readers astray, as we follow Virginia on her tortuous path toward answers. On the way, she learns hard truths: “You can do anything if you don’t care how other people feel.” Not knowing who or what to believe, she becomes self-reliant: “That I had only myself to rely on, in this unknown world that lay before me.”  “We do what we must to survive in this harsh and bitter universe.” The story is told in the first person and through a series of letters to Virginia from Simon.

Cocoa Beach tells of the struggle between good and evil, lies and truth, that things are not always what they seem. It is an entertaining and informative read.

Sydney Williams