A man with a history America’s unofficial historian laureate returns with book about 1776

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If God had a voice, it would have to sound a lot like David McCullough.

McCullough, 72, a summer resident of Camden, has become America’s unofficial historian laureate.

It is a question whether he is better known for his unmistakable narration of Ken Burns’ “Civil War” series and a host of documentaries (plus the movie “Seabiscuit”) or for his best-selling books featuring the nation’s distinctive history and characters.

McCullough now is undergoing the pain of almost endless interviews on his latest book project, “1776,” which chronicles what he calls “the most crucial year in the nation’s history.”

Today, we take the success of the American Revolution for granted, but in 1776, “everything was down to 3,000 men. At key moments, if the wind had blown differently in New York in August or on the Delaware River in December, it would have been all over. I truly believe that,” he told Newsweek magazine in a May 23 cover story.

In “1776,” McCullough recognized that “there were too few soldiers and too few guns. The American experiment might be over before it really ever even began.”

Even George Washington admitted in a letter home that “few know the predicament we are in.”

In a phone interview earlier this month, McCullough said that the steady, daylong appointments for 30-minute interviews and speeches regarding his latest book were becoming “more than I can take.”

His winter home on Martha’s Vineyard also is becoming more than the historian can take, and he is planning his trip north to Camden, where he maintains a summer home close to his daughter in Rockport. Not many people leave the Vineyard in the summer. “You have to remember that 100,000 people visit the island every summer. The automobiles alone would drive you crazy,” the author said, speaking from a Washington hotel.

McCullough came to midcoast Maine after visiting his daughter for several years. “I had no interest in visiting before that. But I was drawn to the area. She found a house for us to look at and we loved it. But most of all, we love the people,” he said.

McCullough’s personal history starts in Pittsburgh, where the N.C. Wyeth illustrations in “Treasure Island” sparked his interest. His own tale leads to Yale, where lunch table companions might have included such powerhouses as Thornton Wilder, John Hersey, Brendan Gill and John O’Hara, and courses were taught by luminaries such as Robert Penn Warren.

In 1956, he graduated and took a job in New York City at Time-Life for the grand salary of $95 a week (up from $80 for unmarried employees). “It was a training program, and I got assigned to the circulation department for a new magazine called Sports Illustrated. I was an office boy writing dopey reports. No one knew what they were doing, and it was a lot of fun. Even if you were the greenest writer, they would listen to you.”

There was an open competition for the best direct mail letter to entice new subscribers. “You had to do it on your own time,” McCullough remembers. The new boy won, and the letter became an industry standard. “Everything changed,” he said.

He would have no idea that the simple victory would chart the course of the rest of his life. A short time later, when he saw former President Harry Truman on a New York street, he was absolutely “star-struck.” Again, he had no idea what effect the man from Missouri would have on his life, that a Truman biography would win McCullough the Pulitzer Prize.

On the night of the Bangor Daily News interview, McCullough would deliver a speech to the Library of Congress, another important part of his own history.

When John F. Kennedy was elected, McCullough heeded the young president’s call to “ask what you can do for your country.” He left Time-Life and applied for a job at the U.S. Information Agency, run by news legend Edward R. Murrow.

“It was an exciting time to be in Washington. Don Wilson, a former Time magazine bureau chief, knew me from the circulation letter and offered me a job,” he said. Wilson asked the new employee what he knew about the Middle East.

“I was 27 and didn’t know anything about Arabs. But they hired me and put me in charge of a new magazine. I was over my head, but everyone else was, too. In those jobs, the challenge is always larger than your qualifications. I had a small staff, but I learned a lot in a short time and became an overnight expert. I wrote, did the layout, organized the pictures and did the research,” he said. McCullough did the heavy research on the weekends at the Library of Congress.

One day, as he was leaving the library, he saw some startling photos lying on a desk. They were 25 prints of the Johnstown Flood, the 1889 Pennsylvania disaster that killed 2,200 people only about 80 miles from McCullough’s boyhood home.

He had heard of the flood, but never had he seen such graphic testimony to the “terrible violence” of the disaster.

Spurred by the photographic images, he started researching the event and read several books on the subject. “They were not very good. For one thing, they didn’t know the geography of the area like I did,” he said.

In college, Thornton Wilder made a huge impression on McCullough. He said when a writer gets an idea, the first order of business is to investigate whether a book has been written on the subject. Nothing satisfactory had been written on the flood, McCullough determined.

“I write a book I would like to read,” he said. He started his research, visited Johnstown on his vacation and even found several survivors of the flood. “I loved it,” he said. Three years later, he had finished “The Johnstown Flood,” which became a popular success and brought a $15,000 check from Reader’s Digest.

By that time, John Kennedy was dead and Murrow was dying. The mood in the nation’s capital had changed dramatically. With four children and his supportive wife, Rosalee Barnes McCullough, McCullough decided to quit his job and become a writer. “It was the biggest decision other than getting married to Rosalee.”

A career was born.

One might think that George Washington should be the last subject for a history book. Certainly every fact and figure of the “Father of Our Nation” has been dissected, examined and discussed.

McCullough didn’t think so.

“I wanted to tell the story of the most important year in the most important conflict in our history. I had written about Philadelphia in ‘John Adams,’ but I never wrote much about 1776. With a biography, you can’t stray too far, and I never had Washington on the battlefield.

“It was a lot of fun to write. Again, I wrote about what I wanted to read. I never calculate the market for a book. I write because it makes me find out about the subject,” he said.

The latest book is not a biography of George Washington, although he is featured heavily.

“I sensed that there was a lot more to him. He was not a marble man. He was a man of action. He knew about the theater, architecture, interior decorating and landscaping. He was a hell-for-leather fox hunter. He rode like the wind on those hunts. He loved the hunt so much that he would keep dairies of every one.

“Sometimes he was in the saddle for seven hours at a time. He would not quit. That quality was as important as anything about him,” said the historian.

The night before his BDN interview, McCullough had spent the night at Mount Vernon, Washington’s Virginia plantation home. “Washington was very creative. He designed Mount Vernon, which is much more original than Monticello. Monticello is really derivative, a French building modeled by Jefferson after a building in Paris, which is still standing,” he said.

Numerous surprises about Washington were waiting in the research, even for an accomplished historian such as McCullough. “He was only 43 in the year of 1776. He was younger than my children. He had a fifth-grade education. He had never commanded an army in his life.

“He was not a brilliant general, but he was a terrific leader.

“He hated New Englanders. He thought they were dirty and unruly. They thought they could decide everything for themselves by a vote, like at town meeting at home. They never wanted anyone telling them what to do. The independent Yankees even wanted to vote on their own officers,” McCullough noted.

One of the New Englanders was the heavily underappreciated Henry Knox, who settled in Thomaston after the war. “I love him! He was a great general. His feat of taking those cannons from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston was mythic. He kept his own diary even under the most difficult of circumstances, which was much to our advantage,” he said.

Another underappreciated American hero is Gen. Nathaniel Greene. “He should be known by every student of American history. He was a Quaker from Rhode Island, another one with a fifth-grade education. He was injured as a child and had a severe limp. He knew nothing about the military yet became a general at 33. He was the best general that Washington had,” McCullough said.

In another quirk of history, Greene visited Knox’s Boston bookstore to obtain military books, his only formal training. Knox and Greene became fast friends and were two of the few general officers who fought in the war from beginning to end.

McCullough declined to reveal his next project, now that “1776” is off and running.

Although the McCullough books have found remarkable success, the historian complained that the nation is suffering a collective bout of “historical amnesia,” brought on by poor history teachers and texts that focus on dates and times instead of the passion behind events.

The first thing McCullough would do is to abolish all schools of education. “You can’t teach history without majoring in history. Some of these young history teachers have never studied history, just education. There are too many deadly teachers and too many deadly textbooks designed to kill any interest in history,” he said.

In a PBS interview, McCullough said, “I do feel in my heart of hearts that if history isn’t well written, it isn’t going to be read. If it isn’t read, it’s going to die. You scratch the supposedly dead past anywhere and what you find is life.”

Surprisingly, history books such as McCullough’s sell very well.

“History is regaining popularity because of a number of good writers. People in their 30s and 40s know they were educated inadequately and they want to catch up. One man admitted that he knew nothing about Teddy Roosevelt before he read my article in American Heritage magazine. And this was a well-educated person,” he said.

If the historian had a chance to dine with only one of the parade of historic figures he has researched and written about, it would be John Adams. “He was such a fascinating character. He was brilliant and knew all the players. I would have a lot of questions for him,” McCullough said.

He would invite Adams to the McCullough traditional Sunday night spaghetti dinner, with his special homemade sauce. But McCullough’s history books will never disclose any details of the family recipe. “That recipe is more closely guarded than Coca Cola’s,” he said.

Perhaps when McCullough tires of the prizes and acclaim from history books and television narration, he can start his own spaghetti sauce company.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.

Books by David McCullough

The highly successful works by David McCullough, all typed on a vintage 1940 Royal typewriter, have cut across American history.

. “Johnstown Flood” published in 1968, chronicles the disastrous 1889 flood that killed 2,200 in Pennsylvania.

. “The Path Between the Seas,” published in 1977, is a record of the travails in building the Panama Canal.

. “The Great Bridge,” published in 1972, tells the complex story of the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge and won a National Book Award.

. “Mornings on Horseback,” 1981, is the story of Theodore Roosevelt. It won a National Book Award.

. “Brave Companions,” 1991, is the history of American heroes from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Charles and Anne Lindbergh.

. “Truman,” published in 1992, is the story of President Harry S. Truman and won McCullough his first Pulitzer Prize.

. “John Adams,” 2002, is the biography of McCullough’s favorite subject in American history. The book sold 2 million copies and won McCullough his second Pulitzer Prize.