American author David McCullough, who died in 2022 at 89, was a popular historian whose long list of honors and accolades included two Pulitzer Prizes (for Truman and John Adams) and two National Book Awards (The Path Between the Seas and Morning on Horseback). All told, McCullough received 56 honorary degrees and more than 125 awards.
Best known as a writer, McCullough also garnered attention as a speaker, typically (but not exclusively) on historical themes. Such addresses (as well as other presentations that took the form of essays, interviews and tributes) are the subject of History Matters. It’s a slim volume compiled and edited by McCullough’s daughter, Dorie McCullough Lawson, and his longtime researcher, Michael Hill.
In a preface to History Matters, which was published in 2025, McCullough Lawson writes that “there has been a great expression from people across the country” wanting more of her father’s perspective and wisdom, and more of the man himself. History Matters is designed to answer that call.
Thanks to careful editing by McCullough’s daughter and his researcher, History Matters offers intriguing insights into McCullough’s approach to his work. As Jon Meecham explains in a foreword, McCullough understood that the historical figures he wrote about did not dwell in the past, but rather in their own “vivid, living, chaotic present.” McCullough’s mission, therefore, was to “make their present real to the future,” That is, to us.
History Matters covers a wide range of disparate topics, from McCullough’s writing process to essays and speeches on various historical figures, including people who are not the subjects of his books. The tone varies from one section to the next, so in that sense, History Matters is uneven. Some of the material contained in its pages is more compelling than other entries.
But through it all, McCullough’s distinctive voice emerges, giving readers glimpses of his exuberance, inquisitiveness, positive nature, strong work ethic, commitment to the art of writing and, of course, his love of history in both fiction and nonfiction.
“History shows us how to behave,” McCullough said in a 1995 speech cited in the book. “History teaches, reinforces what we believe in, what we stand for, and what we ought to be willing to stand up for. History is—or should be—the bedrock of patriotism, not the chest-pounding kind of patriotism but the real thing, love of country.”
The personal revelations in History Matters, such as McCullough’s fondness for the old Royal typewriter he bought second-hand in 1965, are enlightening. So to are his tributes to the likes of George Washington, Harry Truman, Harriet Beecher Stowe and the artist Thomas Eakins.
McCullough, who obviously had a deep attachment to the past, was a man of strong opinions about writing and history, including how we should view those who came before us. He vigorously rejected the notion that earlier generations lived in simpler times, as well as the belief that the past was inevitably destined to turn out the way it did.
“Nothing in the past had to happen the way it happened,” he said in a 1999 address at the Library of Congress. “That’s the hardest thing to convey in writing history or teaching history.” Any event or sequence of events “could have gone differently for any number of different reasons at any point” along the way.
History Matters lists some of McCullough’s favorite books and offers tips for would-be writers, including a famous piece of advice from no less an expert than Mark Twain. "The difference between the almost right word and the right word," Twain wrote, " is really a large matter–’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
