The Course of Human Events

In an era of algorithmic feeds and shrinking attention spans, David McCullough stands at a podium and makes the case that history is not a subject but a habit of mind — one we abandon at our peril. Delivered as the 2003 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, this slim but substantial piece finds McCullough at the height of his powers, reflecting on four decades of writing about the American past and arguing, with quiet urgency, that the stories we tell about where we came from shape who we are capable of becoming.

What makes this worth reading is the rare chance to hear a master craftsman explain his own methods. McCullough writes about writing with the same clarity and conviction he brings to his histories — no jargon, no academic hedging, just a plainspoken argument for why words on a page still matter. It reads less like a formal lecture than a long letter from a thoughtful friend who happens to have spent a lifetime inside the archives. Brief as it is, it lingers.