To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian

When Stephen Ambrose became interested in American history at age 18, there was much that America had done that made him proud, but there were many things he condemned as well; slavery, the treatment of Native Americans, racist Southern politicians, the Robber Barons of the transcontinental railroad, the use of the atomic bomb. All through his undergraduate and graduate years from 1953-1960, Ambrose learned such ideas from his professors and believed and then taught them himself when he became a teacher of history in 1960. But after researching and writing about the Civil War in graduate school, Eisenhower in the 60s, Crazy Horse and Custer, Lewis and Clark, Nixon, the transcontinental railroad, and World War II over the next three decades, Ambrose's views on American history changed. In his new book the renowned historian celebrates America's spirit and confronts its failures and struggles. As always in his much acclaimed work, Ambrose brings alive the men and women, famous and not, who have peopled history and made the United States the superpower it is now.