To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian Return to Book Review Page Return to Home Page

By Stephen E. Ambrose

Simon & Schuster, 2003

“He writes more than he reads!”

That backhanded compliment has undoubtedly been directed many times at historian Stephen E. Ambrose. Historian Ambrose, who died in late 2002, wrote more than 30 books and contributed material to many more. Besides biographies of U.S. presidents, he authored books about Crazy Horse and Custer, the building of the transcontinental railroad, the history of West Point, D-Day, and the Lewis and Clark expedition. He also penned Band of Brothers, which was directed by Stephen Spielberg and Tom Hanks into a memorable HBO television series about an airborne unit in World War II.

To his credit, Ambrose, whose reputation could have allowed him to cloister himself in an ivory tower at a prestigious university as a resident scholar and researcher, chose to teach undergraduates at a less prestigious school of his choice. To his discredit, he was targeted with some convincing evidence of plagiarism which he rather feebly credited to academic jealousy and sloppy research.

He was a person whose work ethic destined him to prolific writing. But destiny received a boost when the young Ambrose was selected to work on the Dwight D. Eisenhower memoirs. Deservedly or not, an “Eisenhower bias” permeates To America. The book’s content is approximately 50% inspiring stories about prominent Americans who many might or might not have thought of as truly deserving of greatness. The remainder is split among entertaining narratives of his research, people he was worked with and interviewed, his own autobiography an his personal thoughts about the United States—including moving passages about racial and gender discrimination.