Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
Many black artists, musicians, and writers made the same trek to Paris starting in the 1880s and even before that. It will be very interesting to see how the writer handled that issue as their stories were very compelling.
ReplyDeleteNew York Times review by Stacy Schiff:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/books/review/book-review-the-greater-journey-americans-in-paris-by-david-mccullough.html?ref=books
Interesting. Janet Maslin wrote that McCullough has written some great books of history -- but this is not one of them (or something like that).
ReplyDeleteThere was an interesting excerpt at the Daily Beast about John Singer Sargent, whom I really admire, but the writing wasn't exactly exciting, so this may be one to miss.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-22/the-scandal-of-madame-x-excerpt-from-david-mcculloughs-the-greater-journey/
David McCullough, RIP:
DeleteHis research — on Adams, Truman and so much more — was deep, his writing was lively, and his narrator’s voice in documentary films was familiar to millions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/08/books/david-mccullough-dead.html?smid=tw-share
David McCullough, who was known to millions as an award-winning, best-selling author and an appealing television host and narrator with a rare gift for recreating the great events and characters of America’s past, died on Sunday at his home in Hingham, Mass., southeast of Boston. He was 89.
The death was confirmed by his daughter Dorie Lawson. No specific cause was given.
Mr. McCullough won Pulitzer Prizes for two presidential biographies, “Truman” (1992) and “John Adams” (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.
Deep research and lively readability were hallmarks of his books, and so was their tendency to leap off the shelves. “Truman” topped The New York Times’s best-seller list for 43 weeks; “John Adams” was No. 1 in its first week and has since gone through dozens more printings.
His readers got a lot of work for their money: The Adams project took Mr. McCullough seven years, and “Truman” took him 10 (and when at last he showed his wife, Rosalee McCullough, the massive typescript, he said, she was amazed that it hadn’t taken longer). “The Great Bridge” (1972), his exhaustive account of the technology, personalities and politics involved in building the Brooklyn Bridge, was hailed as a monument in its own right. Yet there was hardly anything in his writing to suggest that he had ever staggered under the weight of his homework.
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“The Great Bridge” (1972), Mr. McCullough's account of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, was hailed as a monument in its own right. His “Truman” (1992) topped The New York Times’s best-seller list for 43 weeks.
Critics saluted him as a literary master, adept at imbuing the familiar with narrative drama and bringing momentous events to life through small details and the accounts of individual witnesses. A prime example was his rendering of the Second Continental Congress in 1776, central to the Adams book, in which he captured not only the frustrating day-to-day wrangling over declaring independence as the British fleet approached, but also the sights and smells of a mucky Philadelphia summer, the quality of local architecture and local beers, and the contrasting personalities of two brilliant allies and future enemies.
“Jefferson was devoted to the ideal of improving mankind but had comparatively little interest in people in particular,” Mr. McCullough wrote ...
“Adams was not inclined to believe mankind improvable, but was certain it was important that human nature be understood.”
ReplyDeleteThomas Jefferson, the shopaholic Virginia aristocrat, would confide that John Adams showed a certain “want of taste.” The frugal Adams, for his part, concluded that in Virginia “all geese are swans.”
“I think of writing history as an art form,” Mr. McCullough said in an interview for “Painting With Words,” a short 2008 documentary about him on HBO. “And I’m striving to write a book that might — might — qualify as literature. I don’t want it just to be readable. I don’t want it just to be interesting. I want it to be something that moves the reader. Moves me.”
He went a step further, inhabiting his characters like an actor preparing for a role. While writing “The Great Bridge,” he grew a beard, like the engineer Washington Roebling. Working on “Truman,” he formed the habit of taking brisk early morning walks, just as the president had done.
“People often ask me if I’m working on a book,” he said in an interview with The New York Times in 1992. “That’s not how I feel. I feel like I work in a book. It’s like putting myself under a spell. And this spell, if you will, is so real to me that if I have to leave my work for a few days, I have to work myself back into the spell when I come back. It’s almost like hypnosis.”
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Paul Giamatti, left, in the title role and David Morse as George Washington in “John Adams,” the 2008 HBO mini-series based on Mr. McCullough’s book.Credit...Kent Eanes/HBO
The wealth of information and dramatic structure of his books inspired television adaptations; “Truman” led to an HBO film starring Gary Sinise, and “John Adams” was the basis of a mini-series with Paul Giamatti, also on HBO. Mr. McCullough was himself a natural on television, a self-possessed, blue-eyed, hale fellow of Scotch-Irish descent with a voice and delivery — authoritative if a bit nasal — that kept him in demand for off-camera work as well.
Mr. McCullough narrated the award-winning 1990 Ken Burns series “The Civil War.” And his was the voice that kept interrupting the 2003 Hollywood film “Seabiscuit” to explain historical context.
“Incredibly, you don’t want him to shut up,” one admirer, the journalist and blogger Gary North, wrote at the time. If Americans were at a loss to understand their history, he continued, they could count on David McCullough: “His voice — not imperious, yet not exactly soothing, either — comes on, and we become more calm.”
Mr. McCullough was the host of the public television series “American Experience” from 1988 to 1999 and the narrator of some of its episodes. He was also the host of the television magazine “Smithsonian World.”
“A great historian is gone today,” the biographer Robert Caro said in a statement on Monday, adding, “There is only one solace: His books will endure, helping America understand its past.”
^ long tribute but well worth reading
ReplyDeleteLoved The American Experience. A lot of great docs over the years. However, he always struck me as more of a storyteller than a historian. Not a bad trait to have, but his books struck me as a bit light. He wasn't relying so much on original texts but rather interpretations of historical figures and finding ways to make them appealing to the public.
ReplyDeleteA lot like James Michener in this regard.
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