Stephen Ambrose, author and historian -- Rest in Peace

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Subject: Stephen Ambrose, author and historian

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Dies at 66

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Date Posted: October 15, 2002 1:30:30 EDT

Stephen E. Ambrose, the military historian and biographer whose books recounting the combat feats of American soldiers and airmen fueled a national fascination with the generation that fought World War II, died yesterday at a hospital in Bay St. Louis, Miss. Mr. Ambrose, who lived in Bay St. Louis and Helena, Mont., was 66.

The cause was lung cancer, which was diagnosed last April, his son Barry said.

"Until I was 60 years old, I lived on a professor's salary and I wrote books," Mr. Ambrose recalled in November 1999. "We did all right. We even managed to buy some mutual funds for our grandchildren. I never in this world expected what happened."

Mr. Ambrose, known previously for multivolume biographies of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon, emerged as a best-selling author during the past decade. He was also an adviser for films depicting heroic exploits, a highly paid lecturer and an organizer of tours to historic sites.

His ascension to wealth and fame began with his book "D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II," marking the 50th anniversary of the Normandy invasion. Drawing upon combat veterans' remembrances collected by the Eisenhower Center in New Orleans, which Mr. Ambrose founded, it became a best seller.

"The descriptions of individual ordeals on the bloody beach of Omaha make this book outstanding," Raleigh Trevelyan wrote in The New York Times Book Review.

Soon Mr. Ambrose was producing at least a book a year and becoming a star at Simon & Schuster, which published all his best-known books.

But earlier this year Mr. Ambrose was accused of ethical lapses for having employed some narrative passages in his books that closely paralleled previously published accounts. The criticism came at a time of heightened scrutiny of scholarly integrity. The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin acknowledged in January 2002 that her publisher, Simon & Schuster, paid another author in 1987 to settle plagiarism accusations concerning her book "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys." In August 2001, the historian Joseph J. Ellis, also a Pulitzer Prize winner, was suspended for one year from his teaching duties at Mount Holyoke College for falsely telling his students and others that he had served with the military in Vietnam.

Mr. Ambrose said that his copying from other writers' works represented only a few pages among the thousands he had written and that he had identified the sources by providing footnotes. He did concede that he should have placed quotation marks around such material and said he would do so in future editions. He denied engaging in plagiarism and suggested that jealousy among academic historians played a part in the criticism.

"Any book with more than five readers is automatically popularized and to be scorned," Mr. Ambrose said in an interview with The Los Angeles Times in April 2002. "I did my graduate work like anybody else, and I kind of had that attitude myself. The problem with my colleagues is they never grew out of it."

Two years after his D-Day book was published, Mr. Ambrose had another best seller, "Undaunted Courage," the story of Lewis and Clark's exploration of the West. He reported having earned more than $4 million from it.

In 1997, his "Citizen Soldiers" chronicled combat from D-Day to Germany's surrender. In 1998, Mr. Ambrose wrote "The Victors," a history of the war in Europe that drew on his earlier books. In 1999, he brought out "Comrades: Brothers, Fathers, Heroes, Sons, Pals," an account of his own family relationships and those of historical figures. In 2000, he recounted the building of the transcontinental railroad in "Nothing Like It in the World." In 2001, he had "The Wild Blue," the story of B-24 bomber crewmen in World War II's European theater.

Mr. Ambrose's most recent book was "The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation," with Douglas G. Brinkley and the photographer Sam Abell, published this fall by National Geographic. After learning he had cancer, Mr. Ambrose wrote "To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian," which is to be published by Simon & Schuster later this year.

Mr. Ambrose was also a commentator for the Ken Burns documentary "Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery," broadcast on PBS in 1997. He served as consultant for "Saving Private Ryan," the 1998 movie acclaimed for its searing depiction of combat on D-Day. His book "Band of Brothers," the account of an American paratrooper company in World War II, published in 1992, was the basis for an HBO mini-series in 2001.

He founded the National D-Day Museum in 2000 in New Orleans and was president of Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours.

In August 2001, The Wall Street Journal estimated that the Ambrose family company was bringing in $3 million in revenue annually. It said that Mr. Ambrose reported having donated about $5 million over the previous five years to causes including the Eisenhower Center and the National D-Day Museum.

Stephen Edward Ambrose was born on Jan. 10, 1936, in Decatur, Ill., and grew up in Whitewater, Wis., the son of a physician who served in the Navy during World War II. As a youngster, he was enthralled by combat newsreels.

He was a pre-med student at the University of Wisconsin in the mid-1950's but was inspired by one of his professors, William B. Hesseltine, to become a historian.

"He was a hero worshiper, and he got us to worship with him," Mr. Ambrose told The Baton Rouge Sunday Advocate many years later. "Oh, if you could hear him talk about George Washington."

After obtaining his bachelor's degree from Wisconsin, Mr. Ambrose earned a master's degree in history at Louisiana State and a doctorate in history from Wisconsin. He went on to interview numerous combat veterans, but the only time he wore a military uniform was in Navy and Army R.O.T.C. at Wisconsin.

In 1964, Eisenhower, having admired Mr. Ambrose's biography of Gen. Henry Halleck, Lincoln's chief of staff, asked him to help edit his official papers. That led to Mr. Ambrose's two-volume biography of Eisenhower.

The first volume, "Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890-1952" (Simon & Schuster, 1983), was described by Drew Middleton in The New York Times Book Review as "the most complete and objective work yet on the general who became president."

Mr. Ambrose also wrote a three-volume biography of Richard M. Nixon, published in the late 1980's and early 90's.

He wrote or edited some 35 books and said that he often arose at 4 in the morning and concluded his day's writing by reading aloud for a critique from his wife, Moira, a former high school teacher. His son Hugh, who was also his agent, and other family members helped with his research in recent years.

When he was confronted with instances of having copied from others � "The Wild Blue" had passages that closely resembled material in several other books � a question arose as to whether he was too prolific.

"Nobody can write as many books as he has � many of them were well-written books � without the sloppiness that comes with speed and the constant pressure to produce," said Eric Foner, a history professor at Columbia University. "It is the unfortunate downside of doing too much too fast."

David Rosenthal, the publisher of Simon & Schuster, said of Mr. Ambrose's pace, "We welcome that he is prolific." He added, "He works at a schedule that he sets, and we encourage the amount of his output because there is a readership that wants it."

George McGovern, the former senator, whose experiences as a bomber pilot were recounted in "The Wild Blue," said yesterday, "He probably reached more readers than any other historian in our national history."

Mr. Ambrose retired from college teaching in 1995, having spent most of his career at the University of New Orleans. He received the National Humanities Medal in 1998.

In addition to his wife and his sons Barry, of Moiese, Mont., and Hugh, of New Orleans, he is survived by another son, Andy, of New Orleans; two daughters, Grace Ambrose of Wappingers Falls, N.Y., and Stephenie Tubbs of Helena; five grandchildren; and two brothers, Harry, of Virginia, and William, of Maine.

In reflecting on his writing and on his life, Mr. Ambrose customarily paid tribute to the American soldiers of World War II, the object of his admiration for so long.

"I was 10 years old when the war ended," he said. "I thought the returning veterans were giants who had saved the world from barbarism. I still think so. I remain a hero worshiper."

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