The engagingly readable historian David McCullough, 89, died this week. In 1992, he said he wanted readers to know “that things didn’t have to turn out as well as they did. I want them to know that life felt every bit as uncertain to people back then as it does to us today.”

McCullough was awarded Pulitzer Prizes for two books, Truman and John Adams. He also received two National Book Awards for The Path Between the Seas and Mornings on Horseback. He wrote many other books, those most recently published being The Wright Brothers, The American Spirit, and The Pioneers.

He made the case for reading history much like we’ve made a case for reading literature.

History isn’t just something that ought to be taught or ought to be read or ought to be encouraged because it’s going to make us a better citizen. It will make us a better citizen; or because it will make us a more thoughtful and understanding human being, which it will; or because it will cause us to behave better, which it will. It should be taught for pleasure: The pleasure of history, like art or music or literature, consists of an expansion of the experience of being alive, which is what education is largely about.

“Knowing History and Knowing Who We Are,” Imprimis, April 2005