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September 18 - 22, 2000
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A Historian Chronicles America
| Working on the Railroad |
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Renowned American historian Dr. Stephen Ambrose has just published his latest book, on this nation's first transcontinental railroad. Earlier this year, he was honored by the National Geographic Society as one of seven "Explorers in Residence." In what ways can a historian be an explorer? Imagine that you are an American historian faced with getting accurate information about an event that happened almost 150 years ago. That's the problem that confronted prominent historian Dr. Stephen Ambrose as he researched his recently published book, Nothing Like It In The World: The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad, 1865-1869. Ambrose already had distinguished himself for his many histories of World War II and even a book on former president Richard Nixon, but the transcontinental railroad project posed a special challenge. "I had to do something different from my books on World War II or on Richard Nixon," Ambrose says. "There wasn't anybody to interview." Whereas he had been able to speak with veterans of the war or associates of the former president, that possibility did not exist when it came to those involved with the transcontinental railroad.
Ambrose, who lives in Montana, relied on the diaries and letters he discovered in libraries around the country. These came, he says, "from surveyors and from people that helped make the grade that the track was laid on, people that laid down the track, people who helped build the locomotives. And I was able to use these to put together a picture of how this railroad was built." Newspaper coverage of the railroad construction also added to the picture. Reporters from that time had been able to ask the questions and make the firsthand observations that Ambrose the historian could not. |
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| Finding History |
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Ambrose's interest in that war has extended to founding the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana. The museum focuses on the events surrounding June 6, 1944—D-Day—which marked the allied invasion of occupied France and the turning point in the war against Germany. Among the artifacts that Ambrose helped collect are diaries, letters, and personal memorabilia of the men and women involved in the allied campaign.The museum opened June 6, 2000, on the anniversary of D-Day. |
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"Finding sources—this is what historians do," Ambrose says, in explaining a life's work that has produced more than 30 books. They include studies of the American explorers Lewis and Clark; a volume on the famous frontier adversaries, Crazy Horse and George Armstrong Custer; and more than a dozen books on the soldiers of World War II and their Commander-in-Chief, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
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What lesson has Ambrose learned about U.S. involvement in World War II?
(Requires QuickTime.
| Learning from the Past |
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"There are all kinds of lessons in the past that we have turned our back on. When I was a kid, there was a phrase—'That's history'—which was the ultimate put-down. But there were some awfully ingenious women and men who lived before us and from whom we can learn a lot." Ambrose predicts that his future work as a historian may help "turn back the clock." "In the twentieth century, our best minds worked on how to conquer nature. And their greatest accomplishment was the atomic bomb," he points out. "In the twenty-first century, our best minds are going to work on how to restore nature." As an example, he cites the development of dams throughout the American West. Once considered technological marvels that harnessed the force of mighty rivers, dams have not always protected surrounding areas from floods and have severely affected the natural habitat of plants and animals. Ambrose says that historical research can provide a valuable perspective on this and other aspects of our modern world. "I can tell you what life was like along the Missouri River before all those dams came in. I could tell you that people could move faster in 1900 than they can in 2000. The automobile, which was going to speed up everything in life...also leads to Los Angeles and New York and the traffic and the stop-and-go."
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As for his own area of study, Ambrose points to American Indian tribes, languages, and traditions that have barely been understood by historians and sociologists. "There's so much out there to relearn or newly discover," he says. He notes that there is no time like the present to learn our lessons from the past.
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