. Stephen E. Ambrose

(January 10, 1936 – October 13, 2002) was an American historian and biographer of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a long time professor of history at the University of New Orleans. Ambrose was born in Lovington, Illinois, and raised in Whitewater, Wisconcin, having graduated from Whitewater High School. His family also owned a farm in Lovington, Illinois, and vacation property in Marinette County, Wisconcin. Ambrose originally wanted to get his major in premed, but decided to switch his major to history after hearing his teacher's first lecture in his U.S. history class entitled "Representative Americans" which he took his sophomore year in college. Ambrose went on to receive his Ph.D from the University of Wisconcin-Madison in 1960. He served as a professor of history at several universities from 1960 until his retirement in 1995, having spent the bulk of his time at the University of New Orleans. For the academic year 1969-70, he was Professor of Maritime History at the Naval War College. In 1970 while teaching at Kansas State University, Ambrose was asked to resign after having heckled President Nixon during a speech that the president gave on the KSU campus. He also taught at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and the John Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Early in his career, Ambrose was mentored by World War II historian Forrest Pogue. He was the author of several bestselling books about the war, including D-Day, Citizen Soldiers, and The Victors. His other major books include Undaunted Courage, about Lewis and Clarck, and Nothing Like it in the World, about the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad.

He was the founder of the Eisenhower Center and President of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was the military adviser in the movie Saving Private Ryan and was an executive producer on the television mini-series that was based on his book, Band of Brothers. Former president and five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower requested Ambrose as his biographer after admiring his work on Halleck: Lincoln's Chief of Staff, which was based on his doctoral dissertation.

The resulting Eisenhower biographies were generally enthusiastic but contained many criticisms of the former commander in chief. Ambrose also wrote a highly regarded three-volume biography of Richard Nixon. Although Ambrose was a vehement critic of Nixon's, the biography was lauded as being fair and just regarding Nixon's presidency. However his Band of Brothers (1993) and D-Day (1994), about the lives and fates of individual soldiers in the World War II invasion, placed his works into mainstream American culture. The mini-series 'Band of Brothers' (2001) lionized American troops and helped sustain the fresh interest in WWII that was stimulated by the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994, and the 60th anniversary of D-Day in 2004. Ambrose has received criticism from American veterans.

Veterans of troop carrier units that transported paratroopers in the American Airborne Landings in Normandy have severely criticized Ambrose for portraying them as unqualified and craven in several of his works, including Band of Brothers and D-Day, and for characterizing them as "cranks" when they asked that he change the passages. One online source notes numerous discrepancies and some apparent fabrications, many of which have disturbed other veterans of the 101st. It is said that Ambrose organized his entire family into a sort of "history factory" and began turning out popular books of history like The Wild Blue. In 2002, Ambrose was accused of plagiarizing several passages which he footnoted but did not enclose in the required quotation marks. Ambrose also appeared as a historian in the 25th episode, "Reckoning," of the ITV television series, The World at War, which details the history of World War II. In 2001, Ambrose was awarded the Theodore Roosevelt Medal for Distinguished Public Service from the Theodore Roosevelt Association. Ambrose, a longtime smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer in April 2002. His condition deteriorated rapidly, and, seven months after the diagnosis, he died at the age of 66. He was survived by his wife, Moira, and children Andy, Barry, Hugh, Grace, and Stephenie.

In the above movie of YouTube, you can see and hear Stephen E Ambrose talking in some sort of a panel about President Clinton.......

Thanks to Wikipedia,

H.V. Anderz.

Zie ook: Band of Brothers.