Book Review
Title: Brave Companions: Portraits in History
Author: David McCullough
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Date: November 1, 1992
ISBN: 978-0671792763
David McCullough gives us a stimulating summary of several interesting historical figures, mostly 1800s–1900s. The figures made significant contributions to history in one way or another, representing very diverse types of contributions.
The mini-biographies are light but nicely convey something compelling about each subject. Not meaning to compare, but I couldn’t help think of Lytton Strachey’s Biographical Essays and Truman Capote’s character sketches in both The Dogs Bark and one or two included in Capote’s Music for Chameleons: light touch, entertaining observations, easy read. Read it on a train, for example.
The book is a page turner because the writing is clear, articulate, and aesthetically pleasing—polished but not too formal, conversational but not too informal. McCullough is sitting in your living room chatting about some interesting characters from history that he has read about lately, or read some feature in the newspaper, and is telling you about it. That’s how it felt to me. Sometimes he focuses on characters, other times he focuses on events.
People and subjects: Alexander von Humboldt (late 1700s/early 1800s German scientist and explorer); Louis Agassiz (1800s American scientist and educator); Harriet Beecher Stowe (1800s author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin); An 1880s visit to town of Medora, North Dakota, where incidentally Theodore Roosevelt lived briefly; Frederic Remington (late 1800s painter/artist); Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge in the 1870s, with focus on a few players including John Roebling; A brief look at aviators such as Charles Lindbergh; Conrad Richter (1900s American author); Miriam Rothschild (1900s zoologist—and yes, of THE Rothschild family); David Plowden (1900s photographer).
McCullough has massive knowledge of all the above periods of history, which is obvious even from these light sketches. But McCullough’s expertise is also obvious from his deeper full-length projects (e.g., Truman, John Adams, 1776). If you are familiar with these works, bring different expectations to the current work. Here, McCullough skims through a few brief moments to pass the time on your express line to Penn Station.