Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough, who died last week at 89, was the preeminent historian of his generation. McCullough wrote 12 widely read books but wisely avoided a university affiliation, which is one reason his writing was so lively. Although he wrote books on a wide variety of subjects, almost always in the realm of American history, he was and will be forever known for his link to the American presidency.

McCullough’s link to the presidency manifested in a number of ways. Most prominent were his two magisterial presidential biographies, of Harry Truman and John Adams, although he also wrote great works on George Washington and Teddy Roosevelt. The two eminently readable and impressively scholarly biographies on Truman and Adams may have defined their subjects more than any presidential biographies have defined any two presidents. Truman was mostly known as a middling president before McCullough’s 1992 biography restored his reputation. Adams was the mostly forgotten Founding Father before McCullough’s 2001 take, which was later made into an HBO miniseries starring Paul Giamatti.