Discover the Best Books Written by Stephen E. Ambrose

Stephen Edward Ambrose (January 10, 1936 – October 13, 2002) was an American historian, most noted for his biographies of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a longtime professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many bestselling volumes of American popular history.

There have been numerous well-documented allegations of plagiarism, inaccuracies, and sloppiness in Ambrose's writings and claims he has made about his works. However, in a review of To America: Personal Reflections of a Historian for The New York Times, high school teacher William Everdell credited the historian with reaching "an important lay audience without endorsing its every prejudice."

Ambrose was a history professor from 1960 until his retirement in 1995. From 1971 onward, he was on the University of New Orleans faculty. He was named the Boyd Professor of History in 1989; an honor given only to faculty who attain "national or international distinction for outstanding teaching, research, or another creative achievement."During the 1969–1970 academic year, he was the Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History at the Naval War College. 

While teaching at Kansas State University as the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of War and Peace during the 1970–1971 academic year, Ambrose participated in heckling Richard Nixon during a president's speech on the KSU campus. Given the pressure from the KSU administration and having job offers elsewhere, upon finishing the year, Ambrose offered to leave, and the offer was accepted.

His opposition to the Vietnam War contrasted his research on "presidents and the military at a time when his colleagues increasingly regarded such topics as old fashioned and conservative." Ambrose also taught at Louisiana State University (assistant professor of history, 1960–1964) and Johns Hopkins University (associate professor of history, 1964–1969). He held visiting posts at Rutgers University, the University of California, Berkeley, and several European schools, including University College Dublin, where he taught as the Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History.

He founded the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans in 1989, serving as its director until 1994. "The mission of the Eisenhower Center is the study of the causes, conduct, and consequences of American national security policy and the use of force as an instrument of policy in the twentieth century." The center's first efforts, which Ambrose initiated, involved the collection of oral histories from World War II veterans about their experiences, particularly any participation in D-Day. 

By the time of the publication of Ambrose's D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, in 1994, the center had collected more than 1,200 oral histories.[19] Ambrose donated $150,000 to the Center in 1998 to foster additional efforts to collect oral histories from World War II veterans.