In this intimate, informal portrait of an artist as a historian, Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough welcomes viewers into his public and private world, exhibiting the infectious curiosity, humor and humanity that have defined his work and life. Director Mark Herzog travels with the celebrated writer as he delivers a speech to rapt legislators; climbs the same Philadelphia church's steeple tower as did John Adams two centuries earlier; returns to the Massachusetts Historical Society to again study an original Adams letter written to his wife Abigail a day before July 4, 1776; visits his old Brooklyn neighborhood and makes his annual trek across the Brooklyn Bridge; sings songs, paints pictures, and reflects on his undiminished enthusiasm for writing while sitting in his tiny "world headquarters" (shed-like though not a shed, he insists) on the grounds of his home. Accompanied in most of these journeys by wife Rosalee (whom he met the summer before college), McCullough provides an insightful, anecdotal look into his life and career, while displaying a refreshing approachability and genuine interest in people he meets along the way.
Paul Giamatti
John Adams
Laura Linney
Abigail Adams
Stephen Dillane
Thomas Jefferson
Danny Huston
Samuel Adams
David Morse
George Washington
Sarah Polley
Abigail Adams Smith
Tom Wilkinson
Benjamin Franklin
Steven Hinkle
Young John Quincy Adams
Madeline Taylor
Young Nabby Adams
John Dossett
Benjamin Rush
Ebon Moss-Bachrach
John Quincy Adams
Samuel Barnett
Thomas Adams
Andrew Scott
Colonel William Smith
Kevin Trainor
Charles Adams
Mamie Gummer
Sally Smith Adams
