Why History Matters

by Elizabeth Stice

David McCullough. History Matters. Edited by Dorie McCullough Lawson and Michael Hill. Simon & Schuster, 2025. $27.00. 192 pp.

David McCullough had a very distinctive voice. He was an English major who became perhaps America’s most popular history writer, capable of crafting compelling narrative from years of meticulous research. He was thoroughly patriotic but wrote about the people of the past as people, not marble ideals. He was also famously the narrator for the Ken Burns Civil War documentary. He had a highly recognizable voice on and off the page.

Many of McCullough’s books had lengthy page counts. Though he stayed just outside of Robert Caro territory, there are over 1,000 pages in Truman alone. But the present volume, History Matters, is under 200 pages and includes shorter pieces, some previously published and many previously unpublished. The collection includes a variety of sources, including commencement addresses, interviews, documentary writing, and even some pages he wrote…