David McCullough was born on July 7, 1933, and was raised in his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was an avid reader from a young age and excelled academically, enrolling in the English Literature program at Yale University in 1951. He graduated with honors in 1955.

Over the next decade, McCullough worked for various publications as a writer and editor, such as Sports Illustrated and American Heritage. His first book, The Johnstown Flood, appeared in 1968 to critical acclaim. This was followed by numerous other works on American history, such as The Great Bridge (1972), 1776 (2005), and the Pulitzer Prize–winning biographies Truman (1992) and John Adams (2001). McCullough also had considerable success as a narrator of historical documentaries, including Ken Burns’ The Civil War (1990). Throughout his career he received various accolades apart from the Pulitzer, such as two National Book Awards, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006. McCullough died in August 2022 at the age of 89, two months after his wife Rosalee’s death. The Pioneers (2019) is his final work.