David McCullough, the best-selling researcher of America’s past, has died at 89

David Gaub McCullough was born in Pittsburgh on July 7, 1933, one of four sons to Ruth (Rankin) and Christian McCullough. If he ever knew a dark day in his early years, there seems to be no record of it. He has said in interviews that he loved the city schools he attended and that he had a healthy mix of interests, including reading, sports and drawing cartoons, all encouraged by his parents.

In 1951 he went to Yale, where he became a member of Yale’s secret student society, Skull and Bones, and was inspired by the English faculty, which included Robert Penn Warren, John O’Hara, and John Hersey. Lunchtime conversations with playwright Thornton Wilder, he later said, particularly influenced his approach to choosing subjects—first, take a strong interest in them—and taught him the importance of maintaining “an atmosphere of freedom in the storyline,” even when writing nonfiction.

Mr. McCullough graduated in literature in 1955 with honors. He had thought about writing fiction or plays, or, on the other hand, going to medical school; in this case, he signed on as an intern at Sports Illustrated, which had begun the previous year. Then came work as a writer and editor, first at the United States Information Agency in Washington, D.C., and then at the historical magazine American Heritage.

Working nights and weekends for three years, he completed his first book: The Johnstown Flood, published in 1968, established him as someone who could take on a familiar story—the great failure of a dam in Pennsylvania in 1889, which killed more than 2,000 people – and give it a bigger life. “Superb work,” wrote Alden Whitman of The Times. “Learned but bright, balanced but insightful.”

With the success of The Johnstown Flood and the support of his wife, he took a leap of faith, quitting his day job to write history and biography full-time while the couple raised five children. Throughout his career, Mr. McCullough and his wife read his early drafts aloud to each other, a practice he believes greatly improved his writing. Mrs. McCullough died in June at age 89 at the family home in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, where she grew up. He met Rosalie Barnes at a dance in Pittsburgh when they were teenagers, and they married in 1954.