STEPHEN E. AMBROSE

BY JON NELSON

Stephen E. Ambrose was a highly regarded historian who wrote biographies of presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.  He is perhaps best-known for his books on the Second World War, including Band of Brothers, D-Day, and Citizen Soldiers.  He has been called a “popular historian” meaning his works are meant for the general population.  This is an erroneous presumption, as his works assume a thorough knowledge of military terminology and strategy that general readers are not likely to possess.

However, even if the term popular historian were correct, his writing is insufferably stiff, boring and even impenetrable.  There is nothing in his writing to inspire the reader in any way with the subject matter.  This is particularly true in Undaunted Courage, wherein Ambrose (1936-2002) manages to turn a fascinating subject into a drab account that renders both Meriwether Lewis and William Clark as stodgy, superficial individuals and their epochal voyage as a mundane, business-as-usual trip into the hinterlands of America.  From beginning to end, there is nothing to grab the reader’s attention, much less encourage them to pursue the matter further.

Citizen Soldiers is even more  impenetrable.  Unless the reader is already an insider into military terminology, he will be lost at the outset.  In the very first paragraph, Ambrose mentions the “Parachute Infantry Regiment” without explaining anything about this regiment, its origins, duties, or anything else that would enable the reader to place it in some kind of historical context.

From there, the problems escalate.  On the following page, he introduces G-2, SHAEF G-2, and S-2 without ever explaining what they are other than to say that G-2 is “intelligence” of some kind.  Whose intelligence, the reader is left to discover on his own.  Terms, divisions, towns, and other miscellaneous tidbits are offered throughout the text which only serve to further confuse the non-expert.  At this point, the “general reader” will invariably be left in a state of utter confusion.

As a sidebar, it should be noted that a Forbes investigation into Ambrose’s work disclosed that he had plagiarized from other sources in at least six of his books.  In none of these works, including Undaunted Courage, did Ambrose provide the necessary attribution of these various sources.

Ambrose’s book Nothing Like it in the World came under attack for different reasons, as The Sacramento Bee noted on January 1, 2001 when it identified “significant errors, misstatements, and made-up quotes” in the book.  Ambrose’s intellectual integrity was further undermined when he claimed to have spent “hundreds and hundreds” of hours with former president Eisenhower, which is not revealed either in Eisenhower’s diary or in his phone records.

There are countless other historians that are able to engage the reader and make him feel as if he is actually present as history is unfolds before his eyes. Ambrose is just not of this caliber as a writer. His writing style often seems pointlessly obtuse and impenetrable (not unlike Pulitzer Prize winner Walter McDougall). For the specialist who has already read dozens of books on the subjects Ambrose covers, Ambrose may provide some further useful information. But for the general reader, none.