1. THE PERILS OF PLAGIARISM:
STEPHEN AMBROSE
Kieran Harker
Dakota Marquez
Rhea Quilala
Chad Sinegal
Humanities 10/ periods 6 & 7

2. WHO IS STEPHEN AMBROSE?
• He was a major historian in the late 20 th century who wrote over 30 books in his career, all
of which are about history. He was born January 10, 1936 and died October 13, 2002 do
to lung cancer caused by his many decades of smoking. He spent his childhood in the
small town of Waterwater, Wisconsin. It was too small for him so he was happy when he
went to the University of Wisconsin to take pre-med, plannig to follow in his father’s
footsteps and become a doctor. But he changed his major to history after taking a class
from William B. Hesseltine.

3. WHAT IS THE CASE ABOUT?
• The case is about an author named Stephen Ambrose, who had apparently been accused
of plagiarizing from Thomas Childers’ book, Wings of Morning. Ambrose had been
accused of plagiarizing in his book, The Wild Blue. There were parts of the book, like
sentences and passages that were taken from Childers’ book, or rearranged to “look”
different.
Thomas Childers Stephen
Ambrose

4. WHEN DID THE CASE HAPPEN?
• The book was published on August 14, 2001 and Ambrose was
charged with plagiarism in January of 2002, a short eight
months before he passed away.

5. WHERE DID THE CASE HAPPEN?
• The case had happened in Illinois.

6. HOW DID THE CASE HAPPEN?
• Stephen Ambrose had gone through a book called Wings of Morning and had flat out
taken sentences from the book and put them into his without quoting the author of the
book, Thomas Childers.
“Ball turret gunners had to be “Although all ball turret
small, but even so very few could gunners were small, few of
actually fit into the turret with a them had enough room to
chute on….” wear a parachute….”
The words of The “words” of Stephen Ambrose
Thomas Childers

7. WHY DID THE CASE HAPPEN?
• This is what Stephen Ambrose had to say about it. “I tell stories. I don’t discuss my
documents. I discuss the story. It almost gets to the point where, how much is the
reader going to take? I am not writing a Ph.D. dissertation. I wish I had put the
quotation marks in, but I didn’t. I am not out there stealing people’s writings. If I am
writing up a passage and it is a story I want to tell and this story fits and a part of it
is from other people’s writing, I just type it up that way and put it in a footnote. I just
want to know where it came from.”

8. WORKS CITED
• Mark Lewis. Did Ambrose Write Wild Blue, or Just Edit It. Forbes. Feb. 27, 2002.
http://www.forbes.com/2002/02/27/0227ambrose.html
David Plotz. The Plagiarist. Slate. Jan. 11, 2002
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/assessment/2002/01/the_plagiarist.html
• Fred Barnes. Stephen Ambrose, Copycat. Weekly Standard. Jan. 4, 2002
• http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/738lfddv.asp