David McCullough: History and the American Spirit

David McCullough: History and the American Spirit
-- Recorded 5 May 2018 at Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA --
Presented by MHS' Center for the Teaching of History:
Known as the “master of the art of narrative history,” David McCullough is the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Book Awards, and has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. (He has also received the MHS' own Kennedy Medal in 2014.) He discusses his perspective on history, education, and American legacy to K-12 educators.

Пікірлер: 40

  • @peterjohnson617
    @peterjohnson617 Жыл бұрын

    The kind of man that makes me so very glad I am a reader......... Thanks for all the many,many hours of enjoyment reading your books.......

  • @friendlyone2706
    @friendlyone27062 жыл бұрын

    Why do this man's books feel so honest? He explains near the beginning: He discovers his theme after, not before, his research and analysis.

  • @BrettLeMans
    @BrettLeMans6 жыл бұрын

    Thank you for uploading this...I've watched every David McCullough video there is...."His Voice Helps Me Sleep..." - God Bless Him

  • @Listen-to-Lucy

    @Listen-to-Lucy

    5 жыл бұрын

    Omg I literally just said the same thing to a friend of mine! That voice is a national treasure : )

  • @kathleenmurphy2379

    @kathleenmurphy2379

    5 жыл бұрын

    He has a soothing voice and it's like being told a bedtime story! It's not that it's boring me fall asleep it's that he's able to make you relax with his story and you forget what you're worried about and you fall asleep! He said someone came up to him at a book signing or something at one of his talks my book signings and said the same thing that your voice makes me fall asleep and I think David took it the wrong way. He made it a joke and as if it was a self-deprecating part of one of his talks!!! But it wasn't meant that way and the audience laughed but it's true if you have insomnia it's a bedtime story told by a favorite parent

  • @Pablo123456x

    @Pablo123456x

    5 жыл бұрын

    @@kathleenmurphy2379 your comment gets me more sleepy than David's voice. Thanks.

  • @JoeDReady

    @JoeDReady

    4 жыл бұрын

    I'm incredibly grateful for the insights David McCullough gives in this presentation. Just think if every high school in America had a required semester in, let's say, the 10th grade in which McCulloughs books and lectures formed formed the curriculum and every student had to write a brief paper or two on what he or she learned from listening to him (or from one of his amazingly intriguing books). The glow of a new dawn of learning might brighten the dull, monotonous, overly whiny, postmodern blather that students have to endure in our public schools. McCullough is a national treasure. Teachers should be required to read his books no matter their subject areas (yes even in the STEM categories) simply to feast on elegant, enlightening, elevating education from a man who was himself inspired by teachers who loved the pursuit of knowledge and understanding.

  • @leftyshawenuph4026

    @leftyshawenuph4026

    Жыл бұрын

    I ran across one the other day when he died, and have been stuck on them ever since.

  • @veritas6335
    @veritas6335 Жыл бұрын

    So sorry to hear we lost Mr McCullough this year. He was indeed a charmer and inspired many Americans to know more about our history by virtue of his own personal delight in knowing and communicating that history to the rest of us. I miss him and am grateful for the many talks and lectures that are available to us through KZread that will keep him alive for us for years to come.

  • @friendlyone2706
    @friendlyone27062 жыл бұрын

    "There is no such thing as a foreseeable future." Best quote of the speech, from an historian who knows more deeply than most how the past is filled with improbable, unforeseeable moments

  • @user-tj9bg6tz2p

    @user-tj9bg6tz2p

    Жыл бұрын

    Well, I tend to agree. That said, people (like those of us who watch these programs) who study history and are interested in the opinions of historians, are less likely to be surprised by the future than those don't bother to learn the lessons of the past. there isn't a foreseeable future per se so I'm not sure history repeats - it's more like it rhymes :)

  • @friendlyone2706

    @friendlyone2706

    Жыл бұрын

    @@user-tj9bg6tz2p People who say we don't learn from the past are 100% wrong. We do learn from the past -- but the past is always an incomplete message (one of the consequences to light having a speed limit, a logical consequence is knowledge cones), and an incomplete message is necessarily unreliable learning. Blue, lieu, lew, few too, two... near rhyming info leads to random. :)

  • @user-tj9bg6tz2p

    @user-tj9bg6tz2p

    Жыл бұрын

    @@friendlyone2706 thats a great point.

  • @lizgichora6472
    @lizgichora6472 Жыл бұрын

    Education is the unifying factor, history is essential for leadership, great statemanship and teacher. 'Blessed memory' always David McCollough.

  • @willmpet
    @willmpet Жыл бұрын

    I have a History major and I graduated from the College of Education at Minnesota (Twin-Cities). I was fortunate to have Mrs. Meyers in fourth grade, Mrs. Bashara in seventh grade, Miss Palm in eighth grade, Mr. Mohr in tenth grade, and Prof. Starling Price when in college, Prof. Knapp in graduate school!

  • @kimmanning2913
    @kimmanning2913 Жыл бұрын

    "If you can get the reader, the student into the *humanity* of the person...it's in the letters that Harry Truman wrote to Bess or Abigail to John Adams. That's when you really get inside the humanity of it."

  • @kirkbowyer3249
    @kirkbowyer32494 жыл бұрын

    GOD BLESS DAVID MCCULLOUGH

  • @friendlyone2706
    @friendlyone27062 жыл бұрын

    During the question - answer session, an "Informed librarian" repeated the oft repeated falsehood woman of Jefferson's time had no vote. 1800, several places single women had full voting rights. By 1807, those rights were lost because of what no place had: the secret ballot.

  • @kimmanning2913
    @kimmanning2913 Жыл бұрын

    "When in the course of human events, the operative word there is HUMAN."

  • @user-tj9bg6tz2p
    @user-tj9bg6tz2p Жыл бұрын

    a sad loss. Mr McCullough died 7 Aug this year

  • @kimmanning2913
    @kimmanning2913 Жыл бұрын

    "He knew this had to be rectified and so this document was created that would eventually take us out of Egypt."

  • @itinerantpatriot1196
    @itinerantpatriot1196 Жыл бұрын

    As an undergrad, I came into the study of American history a fan of Jefferson and by the end of it I was in the Washington/Adams camp. Jefferson was sort of the Che Guevara of his day (not the nastier side of the guy, but the constant revolutionary type). I liked that he had a healthy fear of federal power but as Mr. McCullough points out, Jefferson had that good enough for me but not for thee side to him and he did a lot of his dirty work in the political arena through operatives because he hated direct confrontation. That's to be expected I guess, especially given the times, but he never owned any of it and it was left to Adams to make the first move to restoring peace between them. Adams was vain and quick-tempered but he was without a doubt the hardest working of the founders and he had a strong sense of justice. He also understood people better than Jefferson. The Alien and Sedition Acts submarined his presidency but he never really had the temperament for the job anyway. RIP John Adams. I'm sorry to say your greatest fear seems to be coming to fruition as we are showing ourselves to be unworthy of all you sacrificed for.

  • @kimmanning2913
    @kimmanning2913 Жыл бұрын

    "For all Americans, including Native Americans, people of African descent, and women who didnt get to vote until 1920."

  • @kimmanning2913
    @kimmanning2913 Жыл бұрын

    "Cutler got thru the Congess." "There would be complete freedom of Religion. There would be public support for Public Education..and No Slavery." "A minister of the church in Hamilton...and No Slavery was saved by one vote."

  • @kimmanning2913
    @kimmanning2913 Жыл бұрын

    And don't ever leave the WOMEN out." "And their part was not only identifiable but invaluable always." "THE NATURAL SUPERIORITY OF WOMEN" 🙂

  • @syourke3
    @syourke3 Жыл бұрын

    “The American Spirit”? WTF is that?! Serious critical historians don’t use such phrases. Only court historians do. But only court historians write bestsellers about American presidents. Doris Kearns Goodwin. David Beschloss. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr..

  • @JB-uv4hm

    @JB-uv4hm

    Жыл бұрын

    Society’s need myths and people who tell them.

  • @syourke3

    @syourke3

    Жыл бұрын

    @@JB-uv4hm Ruling elites need myths.

  • @JB-uv4hm

    @JB-uv4hm

    Жыл бұрын

    @@syourke3 the masses need myths.

  • @jimb3093
    @jimb30932 жыл бұрын

    What the Margaret’s think of the education system today?

  • @dks13827
    @dks13827 Жыл бұрын

    Hey David...... our stupid teachers wrecked the U.S.

  • @JB-uv4hm
    @JB-uv4hm Жыл бұрын

    Fiction.

  • @bobbybrooks4826
    @bobbybrooks4826 Жыл бұрын

    Dead And burried last year And there's another demon in hell

  • @JB-uv4hm

    @JB-uv4hm

    Жыл бұрын

    Not much of a reader are you.

  • @bobbybrooks4826

    @bobbybrooks4826

    Жыл бұрын

    @@JB-uv4hm hilarious....i put My education ( and all the reading it took) up to yours anyday ,. If You don't HAVE money to bet don't respond 8 don't accept food Stamps...If You don't HAVE a serious Phd don't respond because i don't want to take money FROM a total inferior