Historian David McCullough On Portsmouth Stage

MARK YOUR CALENDAR

David McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of books about presidnets Truman and John Adams will be at the Music Hall this summer. Tickets will sell out fast for the Thursday, June 23, 7:30pm as the author will present his latest work, THE GREATER JOURNEY: Americans in Paris. (See details below) 

 

 

Writers on a New England Stage, the celebrated author series presented at The Music Hall with partners New Hampshire Public Radio, Yankee Magazine, and RiverRun Bookstore, announced DAVID McCULLOUGH will take the stage on Thursday, June 23, 2011, to discuss his latest book THE GREATER JOURNEY: Americans in Paris. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s latest work, which will be published in May, chronicles generations of Americans in Paris from 1830 to 1900. 

Tickets to Writers on a New England Stage: David McCullough are on sale to Music Hall members currently. Ticket sales will open to the public on Friday, April 15. Vouchers for books signed by the author will also go on sale at that time.  

Says Executive Producer Patricia Lynch, “We encourage fans of Writers on a New England Stage and David McCullough to get their tickets early. We expect this event will sell out.  You won’t want to miss hearing from one of today’s greatest authors, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner.” 

About the book, THE GREATER JOURNEY: Americans in Paris  

As David McCullough writes, “Not all pioneers went west.,”  and his book is a powerful narrative of those who went the other direction: to Europe, to Paris.  Like the pioneers out west, says McCullough, these men and women had had the initiative and were willing to face the adversities that come from engaging in an entirely new experience, not just for their own improvement but to benefit their country.  THE GREATER JOURNEY is a chronicle spanning generations of the many gifted young Americans, ambitious to excel, whose time in Paris—from 1830 to 1900—changed their lives and thus the course of American literature, medicine, art, architecture, music, dance, and history. Many of these central characters are well known—James Fenimore Cooper, Samuel F. B. Morse, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mary Cassatt and Augustus Saint-Gaudens.  Others are less so, like Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female physician in the United States, and Elihu Washburne, whose experience through the Siege of Paris is one readers will never forget.

“THE GREATER JOURNEY is a book I’ve wanted to write for a long time, and to a degree it comes out of a conviction that history is a lot more than just politics and the military.  Since I was a boy I’ve been fascinated with Paris and the experiences of American artists and musicians, writers, and students of medicine and architecture, who took it upon themselves to go there when that wasn’t easy and who brought home so much of immense value to all of us,” says McCullough. “This is a big part of the American story, much of which has been too long overlooked.  What amazing men and women they were and what a journey they had!”  

According to Jonathan Karp, executive VP and publisher at Simon & Schuster,  “As always, readers will be exhilarated by the way David McCullough  takes us on a journey. You feel as though you’re on the streets of Paris,  where wine is cheaper than milk and history is happening before your eyes.”  

About the author, DAVID McCULLOUGH  

David McCullough has twice received the Pulitzer Prize, for Truman and John Adams, and twice received the National Book Award, for The Path Between the Seas and Mornings on Horseback. His other widely acclaimed books are 1776, Brave Companions, The Great Bridge, and The Johnstown Flood. All told, there are more than 9 million copies of his books in print. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors including the National Book Foundation Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award, the Francis Parkman Prize (which he won twice), the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the National Humanities Medal, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has received more than forty honorary degrees.

“As always, readers will be exhilarated by the way David McCullough takes us on a journey. You feel as if you’re on the streets of Paris, where wine is cheaper than milk and history is happening before your eyes,” saysJonathan Karp, Executive Vice President and Publisher of Simon & Schuster. “Even though it’s suffused with French culture, it’s a quintessentially American story—classic McCullough.”