Brave Companions: Portraits in History

Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough has written profiles of exceptional men and women who shaped the course of history and changed how we see the world. Their remarkable stories express much that is timeless about the human condition.

Here are Alexander von Humboldt, whose epic explorations of South America surpassed in scope the Lewis and Clark expedition
Harriet Beecher Stowe, "the little woman who made the big war"
Western artist Frederic Remington
the extraordinary Louis Agassiz of Harvard
Charles and Anne Lindbergh, and their fellow long-distance pilots Antoine de Saint-Exupry and Beryl Markham
Harry Caudill, the Kentucky lawyer who awakened the nation to the tragedy of Appalachia
and David Plowden, a contemporary photographer of vanishing America.

Different as they are from each other, McCullough's subjects have in common a rare vitality and sense of purpose. These are brave companions: to each other, to David McCullough, and to the reader, for with rare storytelling ability McCullough brings us into the times they knew and their very uncommon lives.