BISMARCK, N.D. — The death of David McCullough on Aug. 7, 2022, at the age of 89 is a terrible loss. It seems almost fitting that as the American republic totters near the edge of the abyss, our most civil of public historians has taken his exit.
McCullough seems like a creature from an earlier, more innocent, more attractive era of American life. Soft-spoken, unendingly polite, thoughtful, generous, wry and fair-minded, McCullough gave his life to the notion that we can know and learn from our history. He will forever be remembered as the voice of Ken Burns’ documentary on the Civil War. Choosing McCullough to perform the narration was one of the smartest things Burns has ever done.
I had dinner with Mr. McCullough once in Washington, D.C. We were both going to testify the next day before a congressional subcommittee on funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities. I was just a callow young punk and he was eminent and I was just thrilled to be in his presence. He has said many times that he feels blessed that his parents wanted him to have a full immersion in the humanities. I feel precisely the same way, but it was not my parents who showed me the way. In fact, I think it possible to argue that the decline of American civic culture has coincided with the decline of emphasis on the humanities and liberal arts in our colleges and universities.
McCullough famously insisted on writing his books on his typewriter long after that was no longer an efficient way to get words into print. Just as the last World War II veteran is sure to die in the next 20 years, and the last of the Beatles is sure to die probably sooner than that, and just as Donald Trump is certain to die before 2040 and probably much sooner, so we can be sure that the last book written on a typewriter is just around the corner. From a word processing point of view, it’s irrational (maybe insane) to write a book, particularly a footnoted book, on a typewriter, when Microsoft Word and the miraculous bibliographical tool WorldCat are available alternatives. I still have my gray-green portable Hermes 3000 typewriter, a high school graduation gift from my parents, and I drag it out at least twice a year when I need to write something I regard as gravely important. My daughter, now 28, grew up somehow knowing how to type without ever taking typing lessons in school, and she once asked for a typewriter the way one might seek to buy a clunky old Schwinn bicycle.
McCullough wrote dozens of books. To my mind, the best of them are his Truman (1992), John Adams (2002), and Mornings on Horseback (1982) (about young Theodore Roosevelt), even though his psychological theory about TR’s asthma is no longer regarded as helpful. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award. In 2006 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.