Writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, and Henry James were all “discovering” Paris, marveling at the treasures in the Louvre, or out with the Sunday throngs strolling the city’s boulevards and gardens. From all they learned in Paris, Holmes and his fellow “medicals” were to exert lasting influence on the profession of medicine in the United States. Medical student Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote home of his toil and the exhilaration in “being at the center of things” in what was then the medical capital of the world. Healy, who had almost no money and little education, took the gamble of a lifetime and with no prospects whatsoever in Paris became one of the most celebrated portrait painters of the day. Pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk from New Orleans launched his spectacular career performing in Paris at age 15. From something he saw in France, Morse would also bring home his momentous idea for the telegraph. Morse, worked unrelentingly every day in Paris, Cooper writing and Morse painting what would be his masterpiece. Two staunch friends, James Fenimore Cooper and Samuel F. There he saw black students with the same ambition he had, and when he returned home, he would become the most powerful, unyielding voice for abolition in the U.S.

Another was Charles Sumner, who enrolled at the Sorbonne because of a burning desire to know more about everything. That they achieved so much for themselves and their country profoundly altered American history.Īs David McCullough writes, “Not all pioneers went west.” Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in America, was one of this intrepid band. Most had never left home, never experienced a different culture. The Greater Journey is the enthralling, inspiring-and until now, untold-story of the adventurous American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, architects, and others of high aspiration who set off for Paris in the years between 18, ambitious to excel in their work.Īfter risking the hazardous journey across the Atlantic, these Americans embarked on a greater journey in the City of Light.

The pioneers mccullough summary