Brave Companions: Portraits In History

From Alexander von Humboldt to Charles and Anne Lindbergh, these are stories of people of great vision and daring whose achievements continue to inspire us today, brilliantly told by master historian David McCullough.

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-Exupéry 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.

• The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West
• Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt
• The Johnstown Flood
• The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris
• The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For
• The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For
• The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914
• In the Dark Streets Shineth: A 1941 Christmas Eve Story
• The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge
• Truman