David McCullough: Painting with Words

David McCullough is a happy man – whether singing “Moonlight Bay” with a friend on piano at home, being introduced as a guest speaker at a National Conference of State Legislatures, or chatting with just about anyone with whom he crosses paths. Though his work has taken him around the world, McCullough is most happy when he’s writing about people and events from the past. “I think of writing history as an art form,” he says. “And I’m striving to write a book that might – might – qualify as literature. That’s the aspiration.” In 2001, McCullough received his second Pulitzer Prize, for John Adams. Calling the process of writing the book “the happiest passage in my life,” McCullough describes how he strove to immerse or “marinate” himself in Adams’ life and times. To prove his point, McCullough ascends the same steeple bell tower of Philadelphia’s historic Christ Church as once did John Adams; later, in the “inner sanctum” of the Massachusetts Historical Society, he reads an eloquent letter from Adams to wife Abigail dated July 3, 1776, in which Adams predicts how the next day’s anniversary would be celebrated for generations to come.