David McCullough en la cabaña de su jardín

David McCullough's Typewriter Bookend - Type Writer Book End -...

David McCullough (The Associated Pres)

The Citizen Chronicler

He is called the "citizen chronicler" by Librarian of Congress James Billington. His books have led a renaissance of interest in American history--from learning about a flood in Pennsylvania that without warning devastated an entire community to discovering the private achievements and frailties of an uncelebrated president. His biography of Harry Truman won him a Pulitzer, as did his most recent biography of another president, John Adams.

David McCullough throws himself into the research of his subjects, tracing the roads they traveled, reading the books they read, and seeing the homes they lived in. His diligence pays off in detailed and engaging narratives. In receiving an honorary degree from Yale University the citation praised him: “As an historian, he paints with words, giving us pictures of the American people that live, breath, and above all, confront the fundamental issues of courage, achievement, and moral character.”

Meeting Thornton Wilder at Yale as an undergraduate inspired McCullough to become a writer--his first love, in fact, had been art. While at college he also met his wife, Rosalee. He learned his craft working at Sports Illustrated, at the United States Information Agency, and at American Heritage. McCullough researched and wrote his first book in the precious hours away from his job with American Heritage; The Johnstown Flood came out in 1968. It was a story and region familiar to McCullough, who was born and raised in nearby Pittsburgh. The book was a success and he became a full-time author. Since then, McCullough has given us six more books--The Great Bridge, The Path between the Seas, Mornings on Horseback, Brave Companions, Truman, and John Adams--earning him two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Book Awards, and two Francis Parkman Prizes from the American Society of Historians. His other honors include a Charles Frankel Prize, a National Book Foundation Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award, and a New York Public Library’s Literary Lion Award.

(http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/mccullough/biography.html)

David McCullough calls walking from his home to the backyard shed that serves as his writing studio his "daily commute." The structure's walls are lined with about 800 books, most of them from his work on "John Adams," one of the most popular books in publisher Simon & Schuster's history. (Steven Senne, Associated Press)

Pulitzer Prize Winning Historian, Biographer, and PBS narrator David McCullough

McCullough writes every day in a studio behind his house

David McCullough 

Author, historian, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, David McCullough is also very much a shedworker (although he calls his Pittsburgh shedlike atmosphere a 'writing studio' or 'the bookshop' rather than a shed). Inside, the unfinished walls are lined with around 1,000 books, mainly about John Adams about whom McCullough wrote a hugely successful biography. "I put it out here," he says, "so the kids didn't have to worry about making too much noise while I was writing."

There's a really nice interview with him in The Paris Review including a chat about his garden office. Here's a snippet:

“Nothing good was ever written in a large room,” David McCullough says, and so his own office has been reduced to a windowed shed in the backyard of his Martha’s Vineyard home. Known as “the bookshop,” the shed does not have a telephone or running water. Its primary contents are a Royal typewriter, a green banker’s lamp, and a desk, which McCullough keeps control over by “flushing out” the loose papers after each chapter is finished. The view from inside the bookshop is of a sagging barn surrounded by pasture. To keep from being startled, McCullough asks his family members to whistle as they approach the shed where he is writing

John Adams by David McCullough

About the book: In this powerful, epic biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always honest Yankee patriot who spared nothing in his zeal for the American Revolution; who rose to become the second president of the United States and saved the country from blundering into an unnecessary war; who was learned beyond all but a few and regarded by some as "out of his senses"; and whose marriage to the wise and valiant Abigail Adams is one of the most moving love stories in American history

DAVID MCCULLOUGH PAINTING WITH WORDS from Micah Bomgaars on Vimeo:

http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/mcc2bio-1

http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/mccullough/biography.html

http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/05/27/specials/mccullough.html

http://www.post-gazette.com/books/20011230mccullough1230fnp2.asp

http://www.shedworking.co.uk/2012/02/david-mccullough-shedworker.html

http://abookwormsreviews.blogspot.com/2012/01/john-adams-by-david-mccullough.html