This book was published in 2002 shortly before Ambrose died. It is an excellent treatise on many of the forty historical book subjects that he covered in his career. Ambrose is what might be called a ‘popular’ historian. And his passion - judging by the number of books - would be military campaigns. D-Day and Band of Brothers are amongst the best of them. These books also led to his museum creation and fundraising for D-Day and many friendships with veterans of all stripes. If you have seen any of his interviews in various documentaries, the seriousness and passion with which he speaks is quite engaging.

Interestingly enough I’m more drawn to his other works - those that involve the American landscape. His book on Lewis and Clark called ‘Undaunted Courage’ and his book ‘Crazy Horse and Custer’ are amongst my favorites by any author. These books ooze with images of landscapes and wildness - just beautiful and romantic in an American West way.

Ambrose is a bit old school especially regarding his patriotic fervor in defending Eisenhower. As a young author he became Eisenhower’s biographer and got to know him very well. But despite his subjectivity, Ambrose’s heart is in the right place and his sins - if any exist - would be ones of opinion. His books do not avoid unseemly subjects.

I do not agree with Ambrose when he says that Nixon was actually one of America’s better presidents - as measured by political accomplishments. Ambrose probably had a clearer eyed view than myself because he clearly did not like the guy, called him a liar repeatedly. Nixon clearly did not like Ambrose calling him “one of those leftist historians”. I haven’t read Ambrose’s biographical trilogy on Nixon only because I have read another biography on Nixon and that is enough for me. I am sure it would be good.

Ambrose provides some excellent assessments of the presidencies of Jefferson, Grant and TR. He contends that Jefferson was a great intellect but not a great leader. Grant was one of the great presidents and this was not a popular opinion forty years ago. He was one of the only historians who publicly said so way back then. Ambrose noted that TR’s greatest gifts to America were the conservation movement that he started and that TR foresaw with great clarity America’s need to be a global power.

In two short chapters at the end of the book, Ambrose tries to address the racism and misogyny that he witnessed and that were especially prevalent in his times. He spoke of his mother who could have run and won a position in the Wisconsin legislature but his father - a Navy doctor - was against it.

4.5 stars.

Stephen Ambrose, one of our country’s preeminent historians, writes about writing history. It’s a refreshing look at some of the men and women, famous or not, who have made the United States a model for the world. Ambrose celebrates America’s spirit, confronting our failures and struggles. If you love history, and the stories about the people who shaped our destiny, pick up this book. It’s a quick read, but one you’ll want to add to your bookshelf.

Historian, Stephen Ambrose, combines an autobiographical sketch with numerous insights in U.S. history, along with editorial comments, to provide an interesting yet biased nonfiction read. Whether you agree or disagree with Mr. Ambrose's opinion, he does provide some little known facts about our country's short, but great history. He also, in these reflections, points out the social injustices and Imperfections of American society while honoring some unsung heroes.

it was ok, definitely not what i was expecting for a history book- but a history book nonetheless, and not something id pick up off the shelf. i did enjoy the writing style, though, and the effort to make everything relevant.

I read a lot of Stephen Ambrose when younger, especially his book on Cold War US politics and the remarkable Crazy Horse and Custer. I was listening to this book while on a road trip. My impressions were it was okay, but I was shrugging off the knee jerk liberalism, how Jefferson was derided by a crowd of students, and Ambrose wasn't a little more feisty in knocking their ignorance and arrogance...a guaranteed trait of young students. I also noted him going into great detail about meeting Indians, how one Indian, a WWII vet, bought a filling station, and all the Indians came there to get free gas and goodies and so the man had to sell it "because he couldn't be a white man to them, he had to be an Indian." It's an important lesson about racial differences. But Ambrose wallows in a lot of white guilt, and race, women, etc. His remarks on Nixon were interesting, although I, like him, was brought on the evils of Watergate, there is now evidence that Watergate was in effect a color revolution to depose Nixon because he was trying to curtail the Military Industrial complex and open up norm relations with the USSR and China,
When I heard a lot of Ambrose, including his unhallowed admiration of WWII and our involvement in it, I felt I was listening to an outdated view of history and the sinking of the liberal canard that has so dominated our thinking. I wasn't angry, but a bit sad, at how things pass and change, including our rock-solid views of who we are and what we have done. His deification of WWII (Band of Brothers) helped to propel the "Greatest Generation" hagiography of that war. But in other aspects, for example, Lewis and Clark and the necessary control of the West, Ambrose offered insights that are still valid and if he offers a lot of liberal guilt, he also didn't repute what we are as a people and what we've accomplished. I felt I was saying goodbye to a friend in print.

I'd never read any of Ambrose's books, so this book provided a nice survey of his body of work through 2002. Writing about the events in history that shaped this country had to have been a lot different in 2002 than writing about them a year later, after we'd invaded Iraq. Ambrose writes with such optimism toward the way America is seen around the world. At one point he talks about what the future of warfare will look like--essentially rebuilding a nation's infrastructure while earning that nation's trust. I wonder what Ambrose would have to say about our last decade in Iraq. Without that perspective, he delivers an ode to this country, and it left me with a good dose of patriotism. It also filled me with nostalgia for the way we were before this costly war.

Great book by Ambrose, he is my favorite historian and everything that he writes is incredibly well written. This is a great overview of American history, it's one of my favorite books and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in any part of American history.

Stephen Ambrose gives some overall thoughts on what America actually is, using his decades of scholarship, study and writing to back himself up. He defends several critiques of American history: the bombing of Japan in WWII, for example, or the myth of Native American harmony with nature. He speaks at length about the work involved in history scholarship, and through his description, his love becomes the reader's as well.

Must say, I'm a bit irritated at Ambrose on occasion in this book (God rest his soul). He argues that no one could find fault with Western expansionism, or else they'd have to tell the immigrants and surveyors they had to go back to New York, Boston or Chicago rather than push westward, taking the natives' lands, "and who would agree to say such a thing?" I would.

He also compares the pleasure of blowing a steam engine horn to the pleasure of an orgasm. Yeah. He lost me right there, too.

But there's plenty else he says worth listening to. I don't know if this was the last book he wrote before succumbing to lung cancer in 2002 or so, but it's a fitting elegy regardless. Nixon dismissively referred to Ambrose, the man who'd written a three-volume biography of him as evenhanded as anyone could possibly pull off, as "just another liberal historian." Wuh. Dick, pal, that guy was in your court more than you'll ever know. He was in all of our courts. That's an American.

Putting aside rumors of the author’s plagiarism and false claims of an intimate working relationship with President Eisenhower, this is an interesting optimistic look at America, but it was written in 2001-2, just prior to his death from lung cancer in 2002.

I had to read this for a graduate school seminar. I am not wild about American history. Still, Ambrose gives a unique view of events and it feels like you are time traveling with Ambrose.

Ambrose almost lost me when he explained that his father refused to "give" his mother "permission" to get a job since he and his brothers and dad thought a woman's place was at home taking care of her husband and kids and finally he "gave her permission" to get involved in local boards and she got elected but he "refused to give her permission" to run for state office or Congress. Hello? When does a grown woman need permission? Is she a dog, a slave, or one of the kids? Fortunately, his views were later modernized and one of his most admired people was feminist author Betty Friedan.

Likewise, in speaking of western expansion, he says whites didn't treat the Native American tribes any worse than they treated each other (so killing and stealing their land is therefore okay because some tribes had fought each other?) and you couldn't tell all the people crowding in to the USA and breeding to just stay East (also land stolen from the natives). He never veered away from this opinion. Asshole.

I saw a reviewer say that it gives readers a ride back to an era when people felt good about American history. I don't feel good about a history of stealing land from Natives, killing them off, oppressing women, keeping blacks in slavery, Jim Crow, hatred and abuse of gays, J Edgar Hoover witchhunts (or Salem witch trials), ramming Christian mythology down the throats of non-Christians through force of law, dropping nuclear bombs on two civilian cities full of babies, kids, housewives, old people, and other innocents nor locking Japanese-Americans up for being of Japanese ancestry. I'm just that way.

There is a lot of personal stuff thrown in including why he opposed the Vietnam War and protested on campus which led to a rift between him and his family. Historical events involve real people and real consequences.

One part I loved was how he criticized founders like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson for writing lofty words about all men being created equal while not considering blacks equal and owning them like property.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has an opinion on a past event. Stephen Ambrose, prolific American historian, wrote this book in 2002, shortly after 9/11. All of his other books had a specific slice of history -- this 20 chapter book starts out as an examination of specific historical topics. Interestingly to someone reading in 2018 when the controversy over confederate statues was blazing, one of the first slices of this book has a useful perspective on evaluating the men and women of the past. For example, he contrasts two slave owning founding fathers, Washington and Jefferson. Washington accomplished his great leadership by his outstanding character. Everyone trusted him and respected him and he didn't use that for his personal gain, but for this country. Yes, he was a slave owner, but he forsaw the end of slavery and at the end of his life freed his slaves. You can hate his failure to free his slaves during his life time, but that doesn't cancel out what he was able to do to unite and lead the United States. When he stepped down after two terms, other world leaders (Napolean for one) thought he was crazy and foolish, but he did it for our countries future leadership.

He didn't care for Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson did not have a good character. Jefferson had great ideals and was able to put them into writing that inspires friends of liberty and rights centuries later. "All men are born equal," was revolutionary for its time and it took centuries for the country to fulfill that principle. Jefferson did not live according to what he knew. You can hate him for his failures of character, but his promotion of far reaching principles has left its mark on the American people.

This is just a glimpse of chapter 1! All the key American controversies have a chapter that shows the multifaceted nature of so much of what has happened. Some of the controversies are even more heated today and Ambrose's insights are sorely missing from today's debates.

Gradually the book shifts and Stephen Ambrose and his family become more part of each chapter. He pulls the veil back on the writing of history, which was his life, until his death at the age of 66 the year this book was published. I'd recommend this book to a lot of Americans who think they know history. I'm one of them; I learned a lot!

Written as Stephen Ambrose was suffering from the lung cancer that would ultimately take his life. It is written not as his typical books covering a particular person or event in history, but in a series of personal essays on the topics that he covered in his career. If you are looking for something different than a series of essays, then I suggest picking up Citizen Soldiers: The U S Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany or Undaunted Courage.

I liked the way Ambrose attempts to take a broad view of those topics, discussing how his and our views of particular people and events (The Founding Fathers, Teddy Roosevelt, the end of World War II, etc.) have changed over time. For a writer who covered so many topics, was the driving force in the creation of the excellent National WWII Museum in New Orleans (http://www.ddaymuseum.org), it was written to bring some finality to his career.