Last night the two-time Pulitzer winner came to the Missouri Theatre on 9th Street, and sold it out in the first 10 minutes. By 7 p.m. the scheduled start time, the line for McCullough wrapped around 9th Street and back to Shakespeare’s.
A professor at the University of Missouri made it an assignment to go see McCullough, contributing to the long line.
David McCullough is an American Historian who’s written multiple works, his most famous being those he won Pulitzer Prizes for, like “1776” and “John Adams.”
During McCullough’s speech, he spent a majority of the time depicting the history behind John Trumbull’s famous painting, “Declaration of Independence”. Instead of regurgitating the information heard in 11th grade history, he talks about the emotional feelings of each individual in the picture, but mostly putting an emphasis on John Adams, saying that the artist put John Adams in the middle of the painting to show how important he was in history.
McCullough’s speech was filled with witty banter on the lack of appreciation by young people for history, along with his strong opinions on modern day politics, but his overall message about the people of today was that instead of arguing and fighting against one another, they should all work together to meet a common goal, and look to their predecessors as examples of behaviors on negotiation.
After his emotional speech ended, McCullough hosted a book signing and interacted with the audience with a Q&A, once again asserting himself as a world renowned historian.