Stephen E. Ambrose, whose stirring books on such heroic episodes in U.S. history as D-Day and the Lewis and Clark expedition made him one of America’s best-selling historians and earned him a National Humanities Medal in 1998, died Sunday at a hospital in Bay St. Louis, Miss. He was 66.
A longtime smoker, he was diagnosed with lung cancer in April.
Ambrose, whose multivolume biographies of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon first brought him to prominence in the 1980s, drew widespread attention earlier this year over revelations that he had plagiarized a number of brief passages in at least five of his books. In each case, Ambrose had cited the source in his endnotes, but did not put quotation marks around the words.
“I always thought plagiarism meant using another people’s words and ideas, pretending they were your own and profiting from it,” Ambrose wrote in explanation of the incidents. “I do not do that, never have done that and never will.”
The significance of his carelessness remains in dispute; the cause does not. Between 1996 and 2001, he published no fewer than nine books, as well as the revised edition of a textbook. In all, he wrote or edited 36 books. To maintain such relentless productivity, Ambrose would rise each morning at 4 to get in at least three hours of uninterrupted writing. “The art of writing,” he liked to say, “is the art of applying the seat of your pants to the seat of the chair.”
So prolific was Ambrose that in 2001, The Wall Street Journal dubbed him and his various enterprises — writing, lecturing, even lending his name to historical tours — “History Inc.”
Several things contributed to Ambrose’s popularity. One was his unwavering emphasis on narrative. “As I sit at my computer,” he once wrote, “I think of myself as sitting around the campfire after a day on the trail, telling stories that I hope will have … readers leaning forward just a bit, wanting to know what happens next.”
Such an attitude made Ambrose a throwback in an era when historians increasingly eschewed storytelling for more analytical or interpretative approaches, but it also made him a favorite of millions of readers.
He “combined high standards of scholarship with the capacity to make history come alive for a lay audience,” said Arthur Schlesinger, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and former aide to President Kennedy.
Ambrose was born in Decatur, Ill., the second of three brothers. His parents were Stephen, a physician, and Rosepha (Trippe), a housewife. Growing up in the small town of Whitewater, Wis., Ambrose was an Eagle scout and hoped to follow in his father’s footsteps as a general practitioner.
At the University of Wisconsin, he played football and, captivated by a course on American history, abandoned the idea of medical school. After graduating, he earned a master’s degree in history at Louisiana State University, where he studied with T. Harry Williams. He returned to Wisconsin for his doctorate.
Dr. Ambrose taught at the New Orleans campus of Louisiana State University (which later became the University of New Orleans) from 1960 to 1966. He spent the next three years at Johns Hopkins University. While at Johns Hopkins, he first demonstrated his interest in the general reader, unsuccessfully seeking to become a columnist with The Baltimore Evening Sun.
Dr. Ambrose’s first wife, Judith, died in 1967. He leaves his wife, Moira; and five children, Stephenie, Barry, Andrew, Grace, and Hugh.
His last book, “To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian,” which he called his love song to his country, is set for release next month.
Famed historian Stephen Ambrose dies
Daily Emerald
October 13, 2002
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