The world-changing power of curiosity

Famed author, historian David McCullough visits Warwick

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“I never took on a subject I knew much about. Writing a book is an adventure, a journey into a unknown world, a time and culture I have never known, a new continent for me to explore,” said David McCullough, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. “The only thing that separates us from the cabbages is curiosity, the desire to understand the world around us.”

On Saturday, McCullough spent his afternoon at Toll Gate High School in Warwick talking about the importance of curiosity and adversity for the culmination of Reading Across Rhode Island. He initially spoke to a small group of high schoolers, fans of his book 1776, and then to a crowd of more than 600 for the Reading Across Rhode Island event.

Reading Across Rhode Island is a statewide reading program that strives to bring various readers from different backgrounds and generations together to read a common book with various group discussions and events throughout the year, ending with a forum with that year’s featured author. The annual project began 14 years ago thanks to the Rhode Island Center for the Book at the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities.

This year’s featured title was The Wright Brothers, which McCullough, now 84, published early last year. He has now authored 10 historical narratives and is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for his books Truman and John Adams, as well as a two-time National Book Award winner for The Path Between the Seas and Mornings on Horseback. His book 1776, which focuses on the American Revolution, is a “classic” used in high schools across the country. McCullough is also a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award.

It was McCullough’s own curiosity that led him to becoming an author. After graduating from Yale University, he was working in publishing. As an editor, he often found himself in libraries searching for photography that was in the public domain when one day he came across photos of the Johnstown Flood, one of the most devastating disasters in U.S. history. Having grown up in Pittsburgh, Pa., McCullough knew the area but never quite understood how the flood happened, nor just how catastrophic it was.

Desperate to find out more, he began researching the topic, only to find he was “displeased” with every book he read. He didn’t like the writing, or found the author often got information wrong. He decided to begin writing the book he wanted to read. Then “The Johnstown Flood” was published in 1968, receiving high acclaim from critics.

“You never know where your own curiosity will lead you. Follow it,” he said.

In speaking with the high school students who came from across the state to see the author, McCullough encouraged them to be curious, especially when it comes to history. He promised them history is far more than memorizing dates and is far from dull.

McCullough said nothing was “ever on track,” and there was never such a thing as the “foreseeable future,” for at every moment there were a number of different ways history could have gone. He said to comprehend history, to know how we got to where we are, one must first understand the people and setting of the past, come to know their motivations, and the sequence of events that led to the next.

McCullough believes it is also important to “let the dust settle” to be able to see our history clearly, as living too close to an event or an era can cloud the perception of the past.

“Attitudes change over time because the world changes. We can better understand when we look back and see what led us there and how it may have changed the course of history,” he said.

McCullough offered President Barack Obama’s legacy as an example. Having studied history extensively, he believes that in the future, negative opinions will change and Obama will be looked on with “immense praise and respect, not just for the things he did, but also for the things he had the foresight not to.”

McCullough said, “When we look back at history, we find what matters most is strength in character. We see these leaders that never quit; they keep getting back up when they are pushed down.”

This is not the first time McCullough has come across Warwick. When researching 1776, he came to find “the most extraordinary American, the most efficient and talented military leader this side of the Revolution,” General Nathanael Greene. He noted how we often reflect on revolutionary figures as old, wise men, but in reality it was a young man’s war.

“These men weren’t superhuman. They may be extraordinary, but they were human,” he said. “When you realize that, you find there is a sense of kinship to these magnificent historical figures.”

Although with the high school students McCullough discussed mostly revolutionary characters, he gave the grander audience an overview of his time researching the Wright Brothers, again a topic he knew very little about. He knew the “five minutes” they are allotted in history class - brothers who were bike mechanics, the first men to fly. He felt the Wright Brothers, who had helped change the world dramatically, weren’t given the accolades they deserved.

“I like to give credit where credit is overdue,” he said.

After the publication of his book, several people remarked how the Wright Brothers and their genius were on par with today’s computer software developers, but McCullough strongly disagrees.

“These men may be smart, they may make major advancements, but they are not risking their lives every day sitting in their cushy offices in Silicon Valley,” he said. “Every day, the Wright Brothers risked their lives for the sake of progress, advancement. They often went up in machines they didn’t know would work or not, with the risk of crashing.”

Neither Wilbur nor Orville Wright graduated from high school, and yet they were considered geniuses, a distinction McCullough attributes to their immense curiosity. These brothers were encouraged by their parents to read, and their father often remarked, “A good life is a life with purpose.” Their curiosity was piqued. They were well read, taking in anything and everything they could - and were brilliant as a result.

Despite complications, mistakes and failures, the two brothers consistently fought their way through adversity and overcame every obstacle to “conquer what was thought impossible to man,” McCullough said.

“The Wright Brothers found that for flight to work you needed wind in your face, you need adversity to move forward,” he said. “Orville once said, ‘No bird ever soared in the calm,’ and that’s a powerful theme. In life, if everything was easy, you may never do a damn thing, and the day these men flew for the first time is the moment the world changed.”

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