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On 31 May 1889 a dam above Johnstown, Pennsylvania, gave way and the flood killed more than 2,000 people. David McCullough, then a young editor at American Heritage, researched the disaster in his spare time, and The Johnstown Flood (1968) became his first book. Over the next fifty years he wrote about a bridge, a canal, two presidents, a year of war and two brothers from Dayton, Ohio, and won two Pulitzer Prizes and two National Book Awards along the way. Millions also knew his voice before his books, as the narrator of Ken Burns’s The Civil War and the host of PBS’s American Experience. This guide covers his 10 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 key books · 1968–2019 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
David McCullough wrote 10 key works of history and biography, from The Johnstown Flood (1968) to The Pioneers (2019). His best known are Truman (1992) and John Adams (2001), both winners of the Pulitzer Prize, and 1776 (2005). Start with 1776, his shortest route into the American Revolution; below you will find the order, the prizes and the adaptations.
Where to Start with David McCullough
If you want a short way in
→ 1776 (2005) — one year of the Revolution, told through Washington’s army.
If you want his defining biography
→ John Adams (2001) — the Pulitzer-winning life of the second president, later an HBO series.
If you want engineering as drama
→ The Great Bridge (1972) — fourteen years building the Brooklyn Bridge.
If you want a twentieth-century president
→ Truman (1992).
10 David McCullough Books, in Order
The Johnstown Flood
On 31 May 1889 the South Fork Dam, which held back a lake used by a private club of rich Pittsburgh industrialists, collapsed above Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and the flood killed more than 2,000 people. McCullough researched it in his spare time while working at American Heritage. Simon & Schuster published it for a 5,000-dollar advance, and stayed his publisher for the rest of his career.
The Great Bridge
The building of the Brooklyn Bridge, from John A. Roebling’s design to its opening in 1883, with his son Washington Roebling directing the work after his father’s death. The Modern Library later placed it 48th on its list of the best 100 nonfiction books of the twentieth century.
The Path Between the Seas
The Panama Canal, from Ferdinand de Lesseps’s failed French attempt in the 1880s to the American project that opened the canal in 1914, including the diplomacy that made Panama independent and the fight against yellow fever and malaria. Besides the National Book Award, it won the Francis Parkman Prize and the Samuel Eliot Morison Award.
Mornings on Horseback
The young Theodore Roosevelt, a sickly, asthmatic child in a wealthy New York family, and how he made himself into the public man he became. McCullough treats the whole family, above all his father, Theodore Sr., rather than Roosevelt alone. It also won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography.
Truman
A life of Harry S. Truman, from a Missouri farm to the presidency, the end of the Second World War, the atomic bomb and the Korean War. It took about a decade to write, and McCullough lived for a time in Independence, Missouri, retracing Truman’s morning walks. It sold more than a million copies, and HBO adapted it as the 1995 film Truman, starring Gary Sinise.
John Adams
The second American president, drawn heavily from the letters between Adams and his wife Abigail and from his long friendship and rivalry with Thomas Jefferson. It won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. HBO adapted it in 2008 as a seven-part miniseries starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney.
1776
One year of the War of Independence, told largely through George Washington and his army: the siege of Boston, the defeat in New York, the retreat across New Jersey and the counter-attack at Trenton at the end of December. The British side, under General William Howe, gets equal attention. An illustrated edition followed in 2007.
The Greater Journey
Americans who went to Paris between 1830 and 1900 to study and work, among them Samuel Morse, the doctors Elizabeth Blackwell and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent and Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Elihu Washburne, the American minister who stayed through the siege of Paris and the Commune, is one of its central figures.
The Wright Brothers
Wilbur and Orville Wright, bicycle makers from Dayton, Ohio, from their first experiments to the flight at Kitty Hawk in December 1903 and the public demonstrations in France and America that made them famous, with their sister Katharine as a third main character. It was a bestseller and in 2016 won the National Aviation Hall of Fame’s Combs Gates Award.
The Pioneers
New Englanders led by the Reverend Manasseh Cutler who settled the Northwest Territory, in what is now Ohio, after the Revolution, building communities on land ceded to the United States after the war. It reached Amazon’s top 20 within days of release, and was sharply criticised by historians for its treatment of Native Americans.
In What Order to Read David McCullough
None of McCullough’s books continues from another, so you can read by subject. Read in publication order and you see him move from disasters and engineering projects (the flood, the bridge, the canal) to biographies of people, and then, after John Adams, to shorter books built around a group or a single year.
His two longest books, Truman and John Adams, each run to well over 600 pages. If you want to know whether his style suits you, start with 1776 or The Wright Brothers, then take on one of the big biographies.
A reading path
1. 1776 (2005)
2. The Wright Brothers (2015)
3. The Great Bridge (1972)
4. John Adams (2001)
5. Truman (1992)
Everything Else David McCullough Published
Beyond the 10 key books: 4 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Essays, speeches and short books
4
4 books · 1991–2025
- 1991Brave Companionsseventeen portraits, from Alexander von Humboldt and Louis Agassiz to the Roeblings and Frederic Remington
- 2010In the Dark Streets Shinetha short book on Churchill and Roosevelt at the White House at Christmas 1941
- 2017The American Spirita collection of his speeches
- 2025History Mattersposthumous essays, edited by his daughter Dorie McCullough Lawson and his researcher Michael Hill
The years · 1933–2022
Quick facts about David McCullough
- Known for
- Long, character-driven narrative histories of America that reached millions of general readers, and his voice as the narrator of Ken Burns’s The Civil War.
- 1933
- Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- 1992
- Truman, his first Pulitzer
- 2001
- John Adams
- 2022
- Dies in Hingham, Massachusetts, aged 89
- Born
- 7 July 1933, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Died
- 7 August 2022, Hingham, Massachusetts
- Education
- Yale University, BA in English, 1955
- Worked
- Sports Illustrated, the US Information Agency and American Heritage before writing full time
- Prizes
- Pulitzer Prize for Truman (1993) and John Adams (2002); National Book Award for The Path Between the Seas and Mornings on Horseback
- Honours
- Presidential Medal of Freedom (2006); Jefferson Lecture (2003)
- Television
- Host of PBS’s American Experience, 1988–1999; narrator of The Civil War (1990) and the film Seabiscuit (2003)
The red mark is 2001: John Adams, his second Pulitzer Prize and the basis of the HBO series.
How David McCullough Writes: History as Story
McCullough wrote history as narrative, built around people rather than themes: the Roeblings rather than suspension-bridge engineering, Washington’s soldiers rather than the causes of the Revolution. He drew on letters and diaries wherever he could, which is why John Adams leans so heavily on the correspondence between John and Abigail.
He went to the places he wrote about. For Truman he lived for a time in Independence, Missouri, and followed Truman’s morning walk. He wrote on a Royal standard typewriter in a small cottage in the grounds of his home on Martha’s Vineyard, and Truman alone took about ten years.
Critics sometimes found him too admiring of his subjects. His answer was that “some people not only want their leaders to have feet of clay, but to be all clay.” That sympathy for his protagonists is also what drew the strongest objections to The Pioneers, where historians said it came at the expense of the Native peoples already living in Ohio.
Watch
David McCullough: The 60 Minutes Interview
Morley Safer talks with McCullough for CBS 60 Minutes about his career, Harry Truman, the Brooklyn Bridge and why history matters.
Frequently asked questions about David McCullough’s books
How many books has David McCullough written?
Fourteen under his name. Ten are the key books on this page, from The Johnstown Flood (1968) to The Pioneers (2019); the other four are Brave Companions (1991), In the Dark Streets Shineth (2010), The American Spirit (2017) and the posthumous essay collection History Matters (2025).
What are David McCullough’s books in order?
The Johnstown Flood (1968), The Great Bridge (1972), The Path Between the Seas (1977), Mornings on Horseback (1981), Truman (1992), John Adams (2001), 1776 (2005), The Greater Journey (2011), The Wright Brothers (2015) and The Pioneers (2019).
Where should I start with David McCullough?
1776 (2005), a single year of the Revolution told through Washington’s army and much shorter than his biographies. If you already know you like long biographies, go straight to John Adams.
What is David McCullough’s most famous book?
John Adams (2001), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography and became the 2008 HBO miniseries with Paul Giamatti. Truman (1992), his first Pulitzer winner, sold more than a million copies.
Which David McCullough books won the Pulitzer Prize?
Two: Truman, in 1993, and John Adams, in 2002. He also won the National Book Award twice, for The Path Between the Seas and Mornings on Horseback.
Have David McCullough’s books been adapted?
Yes. HBO made Truman (1995), a television film starring Gary Sinise, and John Adams (2008), a seven-part miniseries starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney.
Why was The Pioneers criticised?
When it appeared in 2019, historians including Joyce E. Chaplin in The New York Times and Karl Jacoby, and Native writers such as Brett Chapman and Kai Minosh Pyle, said it repeated settlers’ language about “savages” and “wilderness”, treated the Ohio country as empty, and barely named the Native peoples who lived there. McCullough and his publisher declined to comment.
Is David McCullough still alive?
No. He died on 7 August 2022 in Hingham, Massachusetts, aged 89, less than two months after his wife, Rosalee, whom he had married in 1954.
Was David McCullough the narrator of The Civil War?
Yes. He narrated Ken Burns’s documentary series The Civil War (1990), hosted PBS’s American Experience from 1988 to 1999, and narrated the film Seabiscuit (2003).
Footnotes
- David McCullough — Wikipedia
- David McCullough, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author, Dies at 89 — AP via NBC Washington, 2022
- McCullough’s new book on pioneers’ history draws criticism — AP via The Salt Lake Tribune, 2019
- The Greater Journey — BookBrowse
- History Matters — Simon & Schuster
- Brave Companions — Publishers Weekly
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“History shows us how to behave.”
— David McCullough, “Why History?”, remarks at the National Book Foundation (1995), collected in History Matters (2025)
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