| Brave Companions: Portraits in History |  | Author: David W. Mccullough
Publisher: Random House Value Publishing
Category: Book
This item is no longer available
Avg. Customer Rating:  31 reviews
Sales Rank: 3777225
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
ISBN: 0517104172
EAN: 9780517104170
ASIN: 0517104172
Publication Date: June 1, 1993
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Product Description
The bestselling author of Truman and John Adams, David McCullough has written profiles of exceptional men and women past and present who have not only shaped the course of history or changed how we see the world but whose stories express much that is timeless about the human condition. Here are Alexander von Humboldt, whose epic explorations of South America surpassed the Lewis and Clark expedition; Harriet Beecher Stowe, "the little woman who made the big war"; Frederic Remington; the extraordinary Louis Agassiz of Harvard; Charles and Anne Lindbergh, and their fellow long-distance pilots Antoine de Saint-Exupery and Beryl Markham; Harry Caudill, the Kentucky lawyer who awakened the nation to the tragedy of Appalachia; and David Plowden, a present-day photographer of vanishing America. Different as they are from each other, McCullough's subjects have in common a rare vitality and sense of purpose. These are brave companions: to each other, to David McCullough, and to the reader, for with rare storytelling ability McCullough brings us into the times they knew and their very uncommon lives.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 26 more reviews...
 quite a mix May 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a collection of articles David McCullough wrote over a span of years. Each has a different topic and a different pace. Some are familiar characters; others were new to me.
Some of these articles were very good and inspired me to buy books on the topics and folks mentioned, for example: Dolly Madison, Alexander von Humboldt, and Louis Agassiz, and the early aviators. I also added a few of the books mentioned to my Amazon wish list -- they seem like they will be interesting.
I think the book was front-loaded -- the more interesting articles (to me)were at the beginning. As the book progressed, the writing style became so self-conscious, with McCullough's voice coming through all the time. It got old. McCullough kept interjecting himself into the work. "Washington on the Potomac" is especially fraught with self-reference.
I thought the worst article in the collection was one written for Life magazine's 50th anniversary edition, called "extraordinary times." It was melodramatic, alarmist, and ignorant all at the same time. Now, I realize we are reading it with the hindsight of 20 years' perspective, but it was written in 1986, and McCullough queries "what might be the most historic things happening right now?" In 1986. A great question. And he posits, maybe world overpopulation. Maybe the ravishing of the rainforests. Maybe the rise of Islam (one for three).
But how, in 1986, could a very politically-plugged-in historian, a resident of Washington DC, fail to mention that one of the MOST HISTORICAL THINGS going on at the time was Reagan's challenging of the Communists on *moral grounds*, which eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union? I was 16 in 1986... I remember it was kind of a big deal. *How* could McCullough have overlooked it? Granted, the guy lauds democrat administrations, but surely it would not have escaped his notice, even if it was happening in a republican administration? For goodness sake, every Doonesbury cartoon for 5 years focused there.
So I give it a mixed review. I added 7 books to my wish list as a result of interesting new information, but found myself shaking my head at some of the book, and finished it with relief, not reluctance.
 Short Pieces by McCullough September 2, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
With this collection of essays, most written in the 1970s and `80s (but one reaching back into the 1950s), David McCullough exhibits both his strengths and (comparative) weaknesses as a writer. Biography is his forte, and his portraits of Humboldt, Agassiz, Remington, and Harriet Beecher Stowe are first-rate, the sort of pieces that should be analogized in high school literature texts as examples of limpid prose in the hand of a master. Likewise, McCullough's condensation of his Great Bridge is a masterpiece of synthesis; and "Glory Days in Medora" is a classic of a fine and fair portrayal of a character (the Marquis de Mores) whom McCullough rightly finds distasteful.
Nevertheless, McCullough drops to the level of good journalism when he interviews living people, sometimes in "National Geographic style" ("A bell at the railroad crossing starts clanging, and Plowden, obviously delighted, tells me, `We're going to have a dividend.'" [177]) I admire McCullough as both a great writer and as a historian whom no jealous academic has yet been able to bring down. But frankly, jeremiads about strip mining and fawning depictions of profane photographers are not his strong suite. I bet he knows that now.
 Grand. Heroic. Inspiring. Endearing. August 21, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
BRAVE COMPANIONS is a leisurely stroll through the life and times of America. Put on your jacket, turn up the collar, grab your favorite walking-stick and set out for a fascinating walk with America's storyteller, David McCullough.
Washington, Agassiz, Remington, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Some larger-than-life, others obscured through time's dim glass. The Panama Canal, South Dakota Badlands, the rural mid-west. West Virginian coal mines. Places famous and forgotten.
McCullough has an eye for the dramatic and grand. Remington and Roosevelt, thundering across the range, trying to explore the western frontier before it becomes civilized and tame. The building of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, the engineering marvel of its day, contrasted with another engineering marvel, the Panama canal which cost of hundreds of lives in the muck and mire of jungles and mud.
He also has an eye for wonder in the small, tiny details of creation; the delicate, exacting drawings of Audubon and Agassiz, the flea collections of Ms. Rothschild, the painfully detailed drawings of a long-forgotten architect or the private musings and ruminations of a Commander-in-Chief who longed for heart and home.
"We live in the present, it's all we have." And no one captures other peoples' present, quite like David McCullough.
Interesting, Informative, Superb...as usual July 9, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I found this little gem in the wrong section of the library and upon seeing the author, knew it was going to be good. I was right - it's quintessential McCullough. He, like Paul Johnson and Daniel Boorstin, see history in terms of people great and small. In fact, in the preface he admits his preference for people over politics, of the individual over the group.
The work is actually a compendium of various essays written for various reasons and in various journals. The "biographical/great deed" aspect is the common bond among them. One characteristic of ideologues is their disinterest in individuals and their lives. Their only concern in the movement, the creed, the ideology for which they live and die. But real history is actually the story of people (not movements) and it is here that the past comes alive. McCullough chose a seemingly random group of individuals. They range from the naturalist Humholdt, his successor Louis Agassiz, intrepid novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe to a man who fought strip mining in Kentucky just to give you a flavor of the variety offered. McCullough delights in describing not just their ideas and deeds but their looks, their likes, dislikes, manner of speaking - in other words, they become real once more.
We follow McCullough from the Brooklyn Bridge to France to Brazil and are dazzled by him as much as he is dazzled by the personalities he has chosen to describe. The final chapter is a deeply felt reflection on history, a summation that is not a review but still offers a fresh voice. My Grade - A
McCullough's Brave Companions May 17, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
A small book that delivers more than promised by the reviewers. Even the introduction is enjoyable. Each chapter introduces a person that deserves to be remembered; most of whom, would indeed, be a wonderful companion. Good history, good read-aloud book for families.
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