I’m a big fan of historian David McCullough.
I admire his approach to writing.
I am inspired by his story of how he became a writer.
I will forever think of his voice when I think about the Civil War.
Most of all, I love the way he writes history.
Most of my experience with history, even as a history major in college, has been through either dull textbooks or primary source documents.
McCullough is able to transport a reader back in time. When you read his writing, you feel like you know the people in his work.
You can feel his own admiration for them. His hours of tedious studies of the letters of John Adams, Abigail Adams, and John Quincy Adams clearly inspired in him a love that I feel too now that I’ve read (listened to) some of his work.
You can picture them living and speaking and writing themselves.
You feel like you are there.
As I listened to his collection of speeches, The American Spirit, I just kept thinking again and again that this is is how history should be written.
I kept thinking again and again that this is what all writing should be able to do.
