Albuquerque, N.M. • David McCullough is one of the country’s most beloved historians, known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning biographies of Harry Truman and John Adams, acclaimed works on the Brooklyn Bridge and Panama Canal, and for narrating such famous documentaries as Ken Burns’ “The Civil War.”
But with his latest book, "The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West," McCullough is seeing some of the sharpest criticism of his career.
Days after the book was released and reached Amazon.com's top 20 best-seller list, a new generation of historians, scholars and activists took to social media to accuse McCullough of romanticizing white settlement and downplaying the pain inflicted on Native Americans.