McCullough
died 3 years ago, and so his daughter lovingly gathered various unpublished
essays and has gifted us with them. The title is pitch perfect. History
Matters. I’d add Now more than Ever. In our vapid anti-intellectual day, when
history increasingly is ignored or revisioned beyond recognition, history
really matters – and McCullough shows us why (and it’s not so you can score and
win on Jeopardy). Listen to McCullough with me:
“History shows us how to behave. History
teaches us what we stand for. Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant. It’s
rude. It’s a form of ingratitude. I hope that we will become a people who are
about the past because we care about the future. I hope that we will become a
people who are less self-centered, self-conscious, and selfish.” That’s one
small window into the treasure of these essays, and you can’t read those words
without noticing why History Matters, and we’d best pay attention before it is
too late for us, and we’re doing nothing more than writing a new chapter of
history that will be a dark, embarrassing chapter in some future chronicle of
history.
There’s humor, a McCullough trademark. When
asked why he had a horseshoe nailed about the door to his office for good luck,
the great physicist Neils Bohr replied, “I’m told it works even if you don’t
believe it.” McCullough finds some little marvelous detail which tells you
everything about a person and a moment in history. Harry Truman got a call
urging him to come to the White House. Not knowing Franklin Roosevelt had died,
he ran (not “walked” but “ran”) there – stopping first by his office to get his
hat (what McCullough calls “a nice period touch”).
Truman matters, as does George Washington,
and McCullough’s essays on these two should be read by every American today
before we carry on as a people. This pair of essays exposes not just the best
of these two remarkable men, but also the best in all of us, the ideals for
which we might strive. Of Washington, McCullough draws our attention to the
painting in the Capitol Rotunda of him handing over the command to Congress
after the Revolutionary War. “This man who wouldn’t give up, who wouldn’t give in,
wouldn’t give up no matter what, gives up the most important thing – power.
He’s turning over command. No conquering general had ever done that. And when
King George III heard this was going to happen, he said ‘If he does that, he
will be the greatest man in the world.’ And he did. And he was.”
And then Truman. He pushed through an
unheard of (in those days – 1948!) a Civil Rights program – while he was
running for President. His advisors told him he would lose if he did something
that troubling to so many. Truman responded that, if he lost for that, he would
have lost for a good cause. And there’s much more in McCullough’s short essay.
Brilliant – and hugely important for us.
I could say Read History Matters! I’d better say, since we’ve forgotten how to
behave or what we really stand for, History does matter, so read history. It’s
rude and ungrateful not to.
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