The Johnstown Flood

A renowned author and historian, David McCullough received two Pulitzer Prizes and a National Book Award, as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006. He was one of the country’s most prestigious historians for over half a century. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, McCullough married his high school sweetheart Rosalee, with whom he had five children, and remained happily married until her death in June of 2022. David passed away less than two months later, on August 7, 2022.

Educated at Yale University, his first job was at Sports Illustrated, where he worked as an editor after graduating in 1955. For more than a decade, McCullough worked as a writer and editor before happening by accident upon the project that would become his first major work, The Johnstown Flood, a story that he found fascinating and wanted to know more about. His book on the Johnstown flood was his first major work, written over three years and published in 1968. McCullough would go on to say that his method for choosing a book project consisted in finding a topic he was interested in, looking around to see if he could find a good book on the subject, and then writing the book himself if he couldn’t find anything worthy of the topic. The Johnstown Flood book was a natural fit for the author since the event occurred near his hometown, just miles from Pittsburgh, and affected the entire region’s economy.

After that, McCullough continued to write books of historical importance, winning Pulitzer awards for his books on Harry Truman (in 1992) and John Adams (in 2001). Over 51 years, he wrote over a dozen major books, almost exclusively concentrating on the great people, places, and events of American history. As he would mention many times throughout his illustrious career, history is just the stories of people, and so the best history is always, at its heart, the history of a person or group of people. He also served as a visiting professor at various schools around the country and contributed to several important works of film and television, narrating major works by directors as renowned and influential as Ken Burns.