Undaunted Courage | Author Biography

Stephen E. Ambrose was born on January 10, 1936, in Decatur, Illinois. He grew up in the small town of Whitewater, Wisconsin. Ambrose’s father was a doctor, and Ambrose headed to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, intending to pursue an undergraduate degree in pre-med. However, an American History course inspired Ambrose to switch his major. After earning his bachelor’s in 1957, Ambrose went on to earn his master’s degree at Louisiana State University the following year. He returned to Wisconsin for his doctorate, which he completed in 1963. Ambrose has taught at institutions including Louisiana State University (LSU), Johns Hopkins University, and the University of New Orleans. Ambrose retired from the teaching profession after thirty years.

Stephen E. Ambrose
Stephen E. Ambrose

While still in graduate school, Ambrose edited and published several books focusing on the military. While teaching at LSU, Ambrose received a phone call from an admirer of his biography of Civil War general Henry Halleck. That admirer was former president Dwight D. Eisenhower, who appointed Ambrose to edit his papers. This lifelong association was prodigious for Ambrose; he eventually published numerous books, including a multi-volume set of Eisenhower’s papers, a two-volume biography of Eisenhower, and several books on Eisenhower’s military career. Ambrose also wrote a television documentary for the BBC about Eisenhower.

After nearly twenty years of writing about Eisenhower, Ambrose turned to another American president, Richard M. Nixon. Ambrose was the first historian to produce a carefully researched scholarly biography of the controversial president. Ambrose’s three-volume work follows Nixon from his humble beginnings to his fall from the presidency to the resuscitation of his reputation in the 1980s.

Ambrose’s interest in the Lewis and Clark expedition dates back to 1975 when he started reading their journals. His readings sparked a trip in which Ambrose and his family followed the Lewis and Clark trail to the Pacific Ocean and which they commenced on the 172nd anniversary of the expedition’s departure. By the early 1990s, Ambrose had decided to write a book about the expedition. Undaunted Courage (1996) was a critical and commercial success. Since its publication, Ambrose also published Lewis and Clark: Voyage of Discovery (1998) and served as chief consultant to historian Ken Burns’ PBS series on Lewis and Clark.

In recent years, Ambrose has particularly focused on World War II and the lives of the American soldier. His Citizen Soldiers tells the story of the Allied D-Day invasion of France from the perspective of the GIs. He subsequently consulted on Stephen Spielberg’s award-winning movie Saving Private Ryan. In 1998, Ambrose was one of nine winners of the National Medal for the Humanities.