Thread 4481

"[H]istory is about people, he says in the preface of To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian, and there is nothing more fascinating to people than other people, living in a different time, in different circumstances. A storyteller by training and inclination, he has assembled an engaging collection of essays about his favorite Americans among them George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses Grant, and Jackie Robinson, and his least favorites Andrew Johnson, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. The result is a hugely readable cross-section of U.S. history, and a portrait of Ambrose’s growth and development as an historian and a person.

In 1953, as an 18-year-old sophomore at the University of Wisconsin, Ambrose took an American History course called Representative Americans, given by Professor William B. Hesseltine. Listening to Hesseltine’s first lecture on George Washington, the young man was enthralled by the stories of presidents, generals, senators who they were, what they did, what effect it had and immediately switched his major from pre-med to history. In the succeeding years, he received his M.A. under the aegis of T. Harry Williams, author of Lincoln and His Generals, and his Ph.D. under Hesseltine. His M.A. thesis was eventually published as Halleck: Lincoln’s Chief of Staff, and subsequently read by Dwight Eisenhower, who invited Ambrose to work on his papers an event that changed Ambrose’s life.

These autobiographical accounts are interspersed among Ambrose’s thoughts on notable Americans, and here he was at his freewheeling best. Despite his intense admiration for Thomas Jefferson, as remarkable a man as America has produced, he also harshly criticized him for his unwillingness to speak out on the institution of slavery: Jefferson, the genius of politics embraced the worst forms of racism to justify slavery The limitations he displayed in refusing both to acknowledge the truth of his own observations on the institution, and his unwillingness to do something...to weaken and finally destroy it brand him as an intellectual coward.

He also wrote movingly on the mistreatment of Native Americans, the tragic mistake of the war in Vietnam, women’s rights, civil rights and immigration, and a comparison between the presidencies of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon and Johnson.

Of all his subjects, Ambrose was unstinting in his praise for Eisenhower Of all the men I’ve studied and written about, he is the brightest and the best and there are many fascinating pages devoted to his work with the General. This is a rare glimpse into the life and work of a thoughtful man who illuminated history for millions. 288 PAGES 61/8" x 91/4"