c.2025, Simon & Schuster
\n$27.00
\n169 pages<\/p>\n
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
\nThe Truth Contributor<\/p>\n
It all happens so fast.<\/p>\n
Seems like 20 minutes after something occurs, another event takes its place; even this morning\u2019s news already has dust on it. It feels like a race you didn\u2019t enter, in a world where things happen in a blink \u2013 and yet, as you\u2019ll see in the new book History Matters<\/em> by David McCullough, edited by Dorie McCullough Lawson and Michael Hill,<\/strong> even the least event means something.<\/p>\n Not long ago, Dorie McCullough Lawson, daughter of the late writer David McCullough, and Michael Hill, who was McCullough\u2019s research assistant for \u201calmost forty years,\u201d\u00a0 began \u201cgoing through DMcD\u2019s papers\u201d and boxes of decades-old work. Critters had gotten into some of the boxes, but hadn\u2019t ruined anything; instead, it quickly became apparent that the Pulitzer Prize-winning Truman,<\/em> which marked McCullough Lawson \u2019s career helping her father, wasn\u2019t the only work to contain McCullough\u2019s curiosity and delight over historical surprises.<\/p>\n \u201cIndifference to history isn\u2019t just ignorant, it\u2019s rude.\u201d McCullough was fond of saying. \u201cIt\u2019s a form of ingratitude.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, McCullough seemed to view history as a thing to appreciate, as one does a beautiful piece of art. He marveled over the actions of humans, the incredibleness of bridges and the joy of learning. Buildings fascinated him; he wrote often about architecture and, says his daughter, he particularly appreciated builders.<\/p>\n Luck, said McCullough, was a factor in American history, often \u201con a grand scale.\u201d Work is what has made us, and real people with real human flaws have moved us forward. We can\u2019t compare ourselves to those who\u2019ve gone before us because we live in different times – which may explain why readers can struggle to understand history.<\/p>\n Sometimes, McCullough says, he struggled to understand it himself.<\/p>\n Still, we should never stop being, learning or learning about the past.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no better way to understand who we are and why we are\u2026 and where we may be heading,\u201d he says, \u201cthan by reading history from the hands of good writers.\u201d<\/p>\n In the past few years, you\u2019ve probably heard someone say that history repeats itself. The late author David McCullough may\u2019ve been intrigued by that – and with that in mind, this reflective collection of his shorter works will please you, too.<\/p>\n Wisdom drips from each page of this book, wisdom compiled from six decades of research and writing that McCullough did, and his feelings for his subjects. He was, according to his editors here and by his own admission, the kind of person who threw himself headfirst into learning as much as he could about that which interested him, and anyone who ever read his work saw that. His delight in his subjects was infectious, and that\u2019s really very appealing for readers who love history.<\/p>\n History Matters<\/em> doesn\u2019t contain the same kinds of writings that you may have come to expect from McCullough but as a collection of his thoughts and musings, it\u2019s a very nice complement to his larger, longer works. Read this short book. It\u2019s the kind you enjoy, then turn around and enjoy again fast.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" c.2025, Simon & Schuster $27.00 169 pages By Terri Schlichenmeyer The Truth Contributor It all happens so fast. Seems like 20 minutes after something occurs, another event takes its place; even this morning\u2019s news already has dust on it. It feels like a race you didn\u2019t enter, in a world where things happen in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17207,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[20],"class_list":["post-17206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book_review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17208,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17206\/revisions\/17208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17206"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=17206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}