

It also helped influence history, playing an important part in determining the nation’s policy concerning the future of the Canal. It was honored with the National Book Award for History, the Cornelius Ryan Award, the Samuel Eliot Morison Award, and the Francis Parkman Prize from the American Society of Historians. McCullough’s story of the Panama Canal, The Path Between the Seas (1977), was an instant bestseller, acclaimed by the publishing industry and the historical profession. It’s the highest civilian honor awarded by the National Park Service. McCullough will become an honorary ranger in a ceremony on Octoin Boston. May 10, 2012: Author David McCullough, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner for books Truman and John Adams, walks over the Brooklyn Bridge while being interviewed in New York. He was also one of the voices of Ken Burns’s The Civil War, and has hosted a number of public television programs, including The American Experience and Smithsonian World. McCullough’s own voice was heard as the narrator of this film, and of The Johnstown Flood. Golden Plate Awards Council members: Renowned painter Wayne Thiebaud with David McCullough and Edmund Morris, recipients of the Pulitzer Prize in Biography, at the 1989 Banquet of the Golden Plate gala in San Francisco. The book has served as the basis of a memorable documentary film, which was nominated for an Academy Award. The Great Bridge (1972) recounted the building of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Since then he has published a series of distinguished works of history and biography, all of which have won enormous popularity with the reading public. David McCullough addresses the Banquet of the Golden Plate during the 1985 Achievement Summit in Denver. Its success emboldened him to quit his job and commit to a full-time writing career. The Johnstown Flood, inspired by the great catastrophe that struck his native region in 1889, was an unexpected bestseller in 1968. He wrote his first book at night and on weekends while working full-time.

In 1964, he became a full-time editor and writer for American Heritage, the publisher he sometimes calls “my graduate school.” By this time David and Rosalee had married and started a family. “Swept up by the excitement of the Kennedy era,” he moved to Washington and became an editor and writer at the United States Information Agency. After college McCullough moved to New York City and worked as an editorial assistant at Sports Illustrated. While at Yale, he met his future wife, Rosalee Barnes, a student at Vassar. As a student at Yale he met the author Thornton Wilder, and after considering careers in politics and in the arts, was inspired to become an author. Massie presents David McCullough with the American Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award during the 1985 Summit in Denver, Colorado.ĭavid McCullough was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. AugAwards Council member and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert K.
