IMPO, the Ambrose plagiarism thing is pretty much a mountain out of a molehill. Basically, it appears that he didn't dot all his i's and cross all his t's when attributing his quotes. I think this is much more important in the academic world than in main stream publishing. I enjoy reading his books, which is one of the most important things to me. As far as accuracy goes, I agree. For the most part, writing about history is about making an informed guess as to what really happened, based on the sources you have access to. There are literally hundreds of books about what _really_ happened in the Battle of Gettysburg. You pays your money and you takes your chances, as they say.
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Originally Posted by AnemicOak
Ambrose knew how to put together a 'can't put down' kind of read, but sometimes his "facts" are questionable. Some say it's him taking veteran accounts and lending them 100% accuracy instead of following through and verifying the facts. I don't think I've read a history book yet where everyone agreed the facts were all completely accurate and somebody didn't dispute something or other so I don't know. Some others say it's people jealous of his success/notoriety. I'd guess it's probably somewhere in the middle, a little bit of both?
As for the plagiarism I've heard/read about it too and the Wikipedia entry on the subject sums up what I recall pretty well...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen...sm_controversy
On the same wiki page you can see he was pretty roundly blasted for his book "Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863–1869" too and read about the Eisenhower controversy as well.
I've read and liked 'Band of Brothers', 'Pegasus Bridge', 'D-Day' & 'Citizen Soldiers' and also own a few others, but I read them all years ago and honestly can't say if I like them more in memory than I did at the time and can't really state to their accuracy.
Thanks. I've heard good things about all of his books. A friend keeps bugging me to read his Stalingrad book, but I haven't yet. |