Regardless of the criticisms, he was a Good Historian, a Good Writer, and a Good Guy... Historian and Author Ambrose Dies at 66 By Richard Pearson Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, October 13, 2002; 3:50 PM Stephen E. Ambrose, 66, a professor emeritus of history at the University of New Orleans who as a best-selling historian and biographer wrote more than 30 books that told the stories of the American West and American statesmen and warriors to an admiring general public, died of lung cancer yesterday at a hospital in Bay St. Louis, Miss. Dr. Ambrose was the author of multiple-volume biographies of U.S. presidents Dwight David Eisenhower and Richard Milhous Nixon. He spent 20 years on his Eisenhower books and a decade on the Nixon volumes. Both biographies were praised by historians and critics as thoughtful, readable, and authoritative accounts of presidential lives that included new insights. Late in his career, Dr. Ambrose gained fame as the author of a series of bestsellers, many of them dealing with the American military campaigns of World War II and featuring the fruit of numerous interviews that he and his assistants had with the officers, and especially the enlisted men, who had gone over there. These included "D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II," "Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge and the Surrender of Germany," "The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys – The Men of World War II," and "The Good Fight: How World War II Was Won," all of which were published in the 1990s. His 1992 book, "Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne, from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest," was the basis for a cable-TV miniseries that was brought to the screen by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. Dr. Ambrose also was a consultant for "Saving Private Ryan," the World War II film starring Hanks and directed by Spielberg. Dr. Ambrose, who made something of a career as film consultant and much sought-after lecturer, once joked on a late-night TV talk show that he doubted the value of some of his advice. He illustrated this with the advice he gave Spielberg to get rid of Hanks, who he said was much too old to play a World War II Army infantry captain. Spielberg explained that he was sticking with Hanks. Another of Dr. Ambrose's bestsellers was "The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew B-24s over Germany." The 2001 book focused on the bomber commanded by the future South Dakota senator and Democratic Party presidential nominee Geroge McGovern, and on McGovern's crew. The history, again profiting from extensive interviews, was another book that brought home the horrors and suspense of war. Dr. Ambrose, who had described himself as a hero worshipper, told one reporter that he came to this form of history from his work on Eisenhower and from long ago childhood memories of returning World War II GIs. "I thought the returning veterans were giants who had saved the world from barbarism," he said, adding, "I still think so." But Dr. Ambrose wrote on topics other than politics and wars. His 1996 book, "Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West," was a panoramic saga of the great and adventurous Lewis and Clark trek of exploration from St. Louis to the Pacific and back. His 2000 best-seller, "Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontintal Railroad, 1863-1869," told not only of the planning and financing of the quest but also of the influence of railroads on the American West and the national economy. The book gave a voice to the men who did the actual labor for the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific railroads. Mr. Ambrose, who was born in Decatur, Ill., grew up in Whitewater, Wis., where he was captain of his high school football team. A 1957 history graduate of the University of Wisconsin, he received a master's degree in history from Louisiana State University and his history doctorate from Wisconsin. He taught at what is now the University of New Orleans from 1960 to 1964, and again from 1971 until retiring in 1995. He had served on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University from 1964 to 1969, the Naval War College in 1969 and 1970, and Kansas State University in 1970 and 1971. Like many academic historians, his first book was based on his graduate work on Henry Halleck, the civil war general who served as President Abraham Lincoln's chief of staff and was widely regarded as one of the most brilliant men to wear this country's uniform. Published in 1962, as "Halleck: Lincoln's Chief of Staff," it was a sound overview of a brilliant staff officer but was NOT a bestseller. But one old soldier, who had been something of a staff officer himself and who was farming in retirement in Pennsylvania loved the book. He was so taken with it that he called Dr. Ambrose and invited him to his farm. The caller was Eisenhower, a five-star Army general and former U.S. president. Dr. Ambrose, who later recalled "I was flabbergasted" by the call, traveled to Gettysburg where he hit it off with Eisenhower and began a series of books dealing with Eisehower and World War II that led to fame. If Dr. Ambrose gained fame and the admiration of the reading public, he was not universally acclaimed by other American academic historians. Some wrote that if his books were readable and accurate they had little in the way of grand conclusions or historical theory. Some feel that it was jealousy that helped lead to the bump in Dr. Ambrose's writing career when accusations of plagiarism were raised against him. It turned out that while passages in a couple books lacked quotation marks, the quotes were footnoted. Dr. Ambrose apologized for sloppy editing but denied he had committed plagiarism. Yesterday, Douglas Brinkley, also a best-selling historian and former student of Dr. Ambrose remembered him as "the great populist historian of America. He didn't write for intellectuals, he wrote for everyday people." Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Kennedy White House aide Arthur Schlesinger said that Dr. Ambrose "combined high standards of scholarship with the capacity to make history come alive for a lay audience." Dr. Ambrose's autobiography, "A Love Song to America," is scheduled for publication in November. He told the Associated Press in a recent interview that "I want to tell all the things that are right about America." It will also tell the story of how a left-wing intellectual and anti-war demonstrator who hated Richard Nixon became a thoughtful biographer of that president, a historian who saw the glory in the actions of American warriors. Dr. Ambrose, who was diagnosed earlier this year with cancer, told the New Orleans Times-Picayne newpaper that he was inspired to continue writing by the example of former President Ulysses Simpson Grant. That old general grimly finished his autobiography, widely considered the best presidential memoires ever written, while painfully dying of throat cancer.
