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David McCullough’s wonderful book, “Brave Companions – Portraits in History “, was published in 1992.

Let me tell you, friends, it is one of the best books l’ve read in a long while. Maybe ever.

It contains interesting, often fascinating accounts and analyses of people, places, and events, some well known, some not.

The research that McCullough undertakes in the writing of all his many superlative books is so comprehensive and in-depth that it is difficult to fully appreciate. Plus, so much of his literary efforts have involved extensive travel to and within many, many countries.

His literary credits are not too shabby, if you know what I mean. As in twice winner of the National Book Award, the Francis Parkman Prize, the Samuel Eliot Morrison Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book award. And that friends, covers only up until 1992, the date I mentioned earlier. Th awards have continued to accrue during all the years since.

Let me give you just a snippet or two from “Portraits”.

“The span of years since 1936 (remember, this was written in 1992) has been the most troubled, unsettling, costly, adventurous, and surprising time ever. There is no period to compare to it. More has changed, and faster, more has been destroyed, more accomplished than in any comparable interval in the five thousand years since recorded history began.” Think about that, folks.

About Harriet Beecher Stowe, author, as you know, of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. “People are still trying to interpret the book and explain just how and why she came to write it. At first, she said she really didn’t write it at all. She said the book came to her in visions and all she did was write down what she saw . . . God wrote it.” Unfortunately, “Uncle Tom” came to be a form of derision. Not the book, just the title of it.

Then there is an intimate book of a man named Harry Caudill, who devoted much of his life battling against the corporate powers of greed who raped so much of the land in eastern Kentucky by strip mining. Unforgivable.

McCullough tells of standing in a certain location in Washington, D.C., and his mind’s eye once again President Abraham Lincoln comes by, astride his horse, tanned and furrowed face bearing the weight of the most destructive and death-causing war in American history, accompanied by numerous aides also on horseback. Powerful stuff, friends.

David McCullough, a genuine national treasure.

Peace.