David McCullough, Best-Selling Explorer of America’s Past, Dies at 89

(August 9, 2022)

The New York Times

In 2003, he was chosen by the National Endowment for the Humanities to deliver the prestigious Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities in Washington. He spoke of the founders’ notion of the pursuit of happiness — which, he said, did not mean “long vacations or material possessions or ease.” Rather, he said, “as much as anything it meant the life of the mind and spirit.”