Who is popular today?

Bestselling historian who put the lives and experience of the people who built the US at the heart of his workDavid McCullough, who has died aged 93, was the US’s most popular historian. His books were bestsellers; his biographies of Harry Truman and John Adams both won Pulitzer prizes, and were taken up for TV by HBO. Two more of his books, on the creation of the Panama Canal and about Theodore Roosevelt’s early years, won the US National Book award.But McCullough was perhaps best known for his voice, as the narrator of documentaries, most notably Ken Burns’ epic series The Civil War (1990) and the Disney film Seabiscuit (2003), about the 1930s sensation racehorse, and as host of the long-running PBS series American Experience. Continue reading...