Monday, November 12, 2007

David McCullough's Next Book: Americans in Paris

A few hours ago, it was announced that David McCullough has sold his next book to Simon & Schuster. The still untitled project will tell the story of Americans in Paris: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Fenimore Cooper, Edith Wharton, Langston Hughes, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Samuel Morse, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William L. Shirer, Josephine Baker, to name a few. McCullough’s 1776 has 3 million copies in print, and his John Adams will be broadcast on HBO in the spring of 2008, the same time, incidentally, as my Vienna 1814 will be out. McCullough, at first, had trouble convincing his editor of the merits of writing about the cranky second president. John Adams went on to become the best-selling biography in Simon & Schuster history.