“The Great Bridge,” a lengthy exploration of the Brooklyn Bridge’s construction, was ranked No. McCullough received the National Book Award for “The Path Between the Seas,” about the building of the Panama Canal and for “Mornings on Horseback,” a biography of Theodore Roosevelt and Pulitzers for “ Truman,” in 1992, and for “ John Adams” in 2002. He helped raise the reputations of Truman and Adams, and he started a wave of best-sellers about the American Revolution, including McCullough’s own “1776.” For years, from a wireless cottage on the grounds of his house on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, McCullough completed works on a Royal Standard typewriter that changed minds and shaped the marketplace. And millions of readers, and the smaller circle of award givers, were moved by his stories. Interviewed that same year by The Associated Press, McCullough responded to criticism that he was too soft by saying that “some people not only want their leaders to have feet of clay, but to be all clay.”īut even peers who found flaws in his work praised his kindness and generosity and acknowledged his talent. “ McCullough’s specific contribution has been to treat large-scale historical biography as yet another genre of spectatorial appreciation, an exercise in character recognition, a reliable source of edification and pleasant uplift,” Sean Wilentz wrote in The New Republic in 2001.
In earlier works, he was accused him of avoiding the harder truths about Truman, Adams and others and of placing storytelling above analysis. His 2019 book “The Pioneers” was faulted for minimizing the atrocities committed against Native Americans as 19th century settlers moved westward. McCullough’s celebrations of the American past also led to the toughest criticism against him - that affection turned too easily to romanticization.
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