On making stuff up

The New Yorker has a devastating account of how the late Stephen Ambrose simply made stuff up when writing his many books about Eisenhower, general and president. It seems that many of his meetings with Ike--hence many of their conversations, hence many of the quotes attributed to the president--just didn't happen. This comes as no great surprise, considering how Mr. Ambrose earlier plagiarized whole chunks of of Thomas Childers's book, The Wings of Morning, in order to juice up his own account of B-24 crews over Germany in World War II. (Childers wrote the better book and had 15,000 copies in print; Ambrose was given a first printing of half a million.)

But it remains a puzzle: how did Ambrose possibly think he could get away with these thefts and lies? Probably because he knew his colleagues would rally around if he did get caught, just as they rallied around the historian and Vietnam wannabe Joseph Ellis when it turned out he'd been lying to his students about his service in Vietnam (and a lot of other stuff, including his participation in the anti-war movement afterward).

And you know what else? I'll bet the major consequence of the TNY expose of Ambrose will be a spike in the sales of his books. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford