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Brave Companions | 
 enlarge | Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
Category: EBooks
List Price: $11.99
Buy New: $9.59
You Save: $2.40 (20%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  34 reviews
Sales Rank: 1471
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Dewey Decimal Number: 920.073
ASIN: B000QTD63I
Publication Date: May 31, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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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 29 more reviews...
 Delightful Collection August 7, 2008
All writers, especially biographers and journalists, have a collection of vignettes in their notebooks or files that are like film outtakes -- they're left on the cutting room floor. Here, McCullough gathers up his outtakes relating to fascinating people, places and things and puts them together in a nice book that doesn't require concentration. But the people and places he writes about are interesting and reading the book is similar to wandering around in an irrestible old museum. A lot of the material here comes from books he has written and researched. McCullough said he wanted to be a portrait painter in life, and this book is like a McCullough retrospective in words. Nice job.
 Brave Companions August 6, 2008
Received product promptly and was brand new as described. McCullough is an excellent writer and enjoyable to read.
Make your teens read it! May 27, 2008
David McCulloug is my favorite historian ever since I read THE PATH BETWEEN THE SEAS. Since then I have read his books every time I find one.
The chapters on Alexander Von Humbolt was terrific and the one about the building of the Brooklyn bridge made my hair stand on end.
This book should be required reading for all 10, 11 and 12 graders. Its short format and chapter by chapter coverage of persons, places and events is ideal for the short attention span of today's young readers. I will introduce them to persons and events that they have never heard of but might inspire them to do great things if they can just get away from the video games and "reality shows". It may show them that people can do great things when they love what they do and work at.
 quite a mix May 11, 2008
5 out of 6 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 Morès) 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.
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