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Summary: quite a mix
Comment: This is a collection of articles David McCullough wrote over a span of years. Each has a different
topic and a different pace. Some are familiar characters; others were new to me.

Some
of these articles were very good and inspired me to buy books on the topics and folks mentioned, for
example: Dolly Madison, Alexander von Humboldt, and Louis Agassiz, and the early aviators. I also
added a few of the books mentioned to my Amazon wish list -- they seem like they will be
interesting.

I think the book was front-loaded -- the more interesting articles (to
me)were at the beginning. As the book progressed, the writing style became so self-conscious, with
McCullough's voice coming through all the time. It got old. McCullough kept interjecting himself
into the work. "Washington on the Potomac" is especially fraught with self-reference.
/>I thought the worst article in the collection was one written for Life magazine's 50th anniversary
edition, called "extraordinary times." It was melodramatic, alarmist, and ignorant all at the same
time. Now, I realize we are reading it with the hindsight of 20 years' perspective, but it was
written in 1986, and McCullough queries "what might be the most historic things happening right
now?" In 1986. A great question. And he posits, maybe world overpopulation. Maybe the ravishing
of the rainforests. Maybe the rise of Islam (one for three).

But how, in 1986, could
a very politically-plugged-in historian, a resident of Washington DC, fail to mention that one of
the MOST HISTORICAL THINGS going on at the time was Reagan's challenging of the Communists on *moral
grounds*, which eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union? I was 16 in 1986... I remember
it was kind of a big deal. *How* could McCullough have overlooked it? Granted, the guy lauds
democrat administrations, but surely it would not have escaped his notice, even if it was happening
in a republican administration? For goodness sake, every Doonesbury cartoon for 5 years focused
there.

So I give it a mixed review. I added 7 books to my wish list as a result of
interesting new information, but found myself shaking my head at some of the book, and finished it
with relief, not reluctance.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Short Pieces by McCullough
Comment: With this collection of essays, most written in the 1970s and `80s (but one reaching back into the
1950s), David McCullough exhibits both his strengths and (comparative) weaknesses as a writer.
Biography is his forte, and his portraits of Humboldt, Agassiz, Remington, and Harriet Beecher Stowe
are first-rate, the sort of pieces that should be analogized in high school literature texts as
examples of limpid prose in the hand of a master. Likewise, McCullough's condensation of his Great
Bridge is a masterpiece of synthesis; and "Glory Days in Medora" is a classic of a fine and fair
portrayal of a character (the Marquis de Morès) whom McCullough rightly finds distasteful. />
Nevertheless, McCullough drops to the level of good journalism when he interviews living
people, sometimes in "National Geographic style" ("A bell at the railroad crossing starts clanging,
and Plowden, obviously delighted, tells me, `We're going to have a dividend.'" [177]) I admire
McCullough as both a great writer and as a historian whom no jealous academic has yet been able to
bring down. But frankly, jeremiads about strip mining and fawning depictions of profane
photographers are not his strong suite. I bet he knows that now.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Grand. Heroic. Inspiring. Endearing.
Comment: BRAVE COMPANIONS is a leisurely stroll through the life and times of America. Put on your jacket,
turn up the collar, grab your favorite walking-stick and set out for a fascinating walk with
America's storyteller, David McCullough.

Washington, Agassiz, Remington, Harriet
Beecher Stowe. Some larger-than-life, others obscured through time's dim glass. The Panama Canal,
South Dakota Badlands, the rural mid-west. West Virginian coal mines. Places famous and forgotten.

McCullough has an eye for the dramatic and grand. Remington and Roosevelt, thundering
across the range, trying to explore the western frontier before it becomes civilized and tame. The
building of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, the engineering marvel of its day, contrasted with
another engineering marvel, the Panama canal which cost of hundreds of lives in the muck and mire of
jungles and mud.

He also has an eye for wonder in the small, tiny details of creation;
the delicate, exacting drawings of Audubon and Agassiz, the flea collections of Ms. Rothschild, the
painfully detailed drawings of a long-forgotten architect or the private musings and ruminations of
a Commander-in-Chief who longed for heart and home.

"We live in the present, it's all
we have." And no one captures other peoples' present, quite like David McCullough.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Interesting, Informative, Superb...as usual
Comment: I found this little gem in the wrong section of the library and upon seeing the author, knew it was
going to be good. I was right - it's quintessential McCullough. He, like Paul Johnson and Daniel
Boorstin, see history in terms of people great and small. In fact, in the preface he admits his
preference for people over politics, of the individual over the group.

The work is
actually a compendium of various essays written for various reasons and in various journals. The
"biographical/great deed" aspect is the common bond among them. One characteristic of ideologues
is their disinterest in individuals and their lives. Their only concern in the movement, the creed,
the ideology for which they live and die. But real history is actually the story of people (not
movements) and it is here that the past comes alive. McCullough chose a seemingly random group of
individuals. They range from the naturalist Humholdt, his successor Louis Agassiz, intrepid
novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe to a man who fought strip mining in Kentucky just to give you a
flavor of the variety offered. McCullough delights in describing not just their ideas and deeds but
their looks, their likes, dislikes, manner of speaking - in other words, they become real once more.

We follow McCullough from the Brooklyn Bridge to France to Brazil and are
dazzled by him as much as he is dazzled by the personalities he has chosen to describe. The final
chapter is a deeply felt reflection on history, a summation that is not a review but still offers a
fresh voice. My Grade - A

Customer Rating:

Summary: McCullough's Brave Companions
Comment: A small book that delivers more than promised by the reviewers. Even the introduction is enjoyable.
Each chapter introduces a person that deserves to be remembered; most of whom, would indeed, be a
wonderful companion. Good history, good read-aloud book for families.

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