Early career After graduation, McCullough moved to New York City, where
Sports Illustrated hired him as a trainee in 1956. After working for twelve years in editing and writing, including a position at
American Heritage, McCullough "felt that [he] had reached the point where [he] could attempt something on [his] own."
The Johnstown Flood, a chronicle of
one of the most severe flood disasters in American history, was published in 1968
John Leonard of
The New York Times said of McCullough, "We have no better social historian."
Simon & Schuster, publisher of his first book, also offered McCullough a contract to write a second book. the Samuel Eliot Morison Award, the
Francis Parkman Prize, and the
Cornelius Ryan Award. Later in 1977, McCullough travelled to the
White House to advise
Jimmy Carter and the
United States Senate on the
Torrijos-Carter Treaties, which would give
Panama control of the Canal. The work ranged from Roosevelt's childhood to 1886, and tells of a "life intensely lived." and his first
Los Angeles Times Prize for Biography and
New York Public Library Literary Lion Award. Next, he published
Brave Companions, a collection of essays that "unfold seamlessly". Written over twenty years, the book includes essays about
Louis Agassiz,
Alexander von Humboldt,
John and
Washington Roebling,
Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Conrad Richter, and
Frederic Remington. and his second Francis Parkman Prize. Two years later, the book was adapted as
Truman (1995), a television film by
HBO, starring
Gary Sinise as Truman. McCullough published
John Adams (2001), his third biography about a United States president. One of the fastest-selling non-fiction books in history, HBO adapted it as
a seven-part miniseries by the same name. The DVD version of the miniseries includes the biographical documentary
David McCullough: Painting with Words. McCullough's
1776 tells the story of the founding year of the United States, focusing on
George Washington, the amateur
Continental Army, and other struggles for independence. McCullough considered writing a sequel to
1776. The book covers 19th-century Americans, including
Mark Twain and
Samuel Morse, who migrated to Paris and went on to achieve importance in culture or innovation. Other subjects include
Benjamin Silliman, who had been Morse's science teacher at Yale,
Elihu Washburne, the
U.S. Ambassador to France during the
Franco-Prussian War, and
Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in the United States. McCullough's
The Wright Brothers was published in 2015.
The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West followed in 2019, the story of the first European American settlers of the
Northwest Territory, a vast American wilderness to which the
Ohio River was the gateway. ==Personal life==