Bishop's Book Review
To America
By Stephen E. Ambrose
(2002: Simon and Schuster) 265 pages
As he was dying of cancer, the best selling author Steven Ambrose wrote this last Testament to his love for the United States. Ambrose is best known for his best sellers Band of Brothers, D-Day, and Undaunted Courage. He was also an academic trained under a distinguished history faculty at the great University of Wisconsin in Madison. His multi-volume biographies of Nixon and Eisenhower are well respected. Dedicated to his nurses and doctor who attended him on his last days, Ambrose writes in To America an eloquent personal series of essays on the American experience from the Founders to Women’s Rights and Nation Building. You will not agree with all of his conclusions, as I did not, but in this book is a story of a man who comes to terms with his profession, his country and his own mortality.”
Ambrose takes on some of the prevailing myths of American history in this revisionist work. He argues that the founding fathers were not immoral for holding slaves; that American Indians were not nearly as environmentally minded as the modern environmental movement would have them portrayed. He lifts up President U.S. Grant as a good president for his record on Civil Rights. He applauds President Theodore Roosevelt even as Roosevelt is condemned by many current American historians as an imperialist. Ambrose defends the use of the Atomic Bomb in the last days of World War II reminding us that all sides were ruthless. The war was replete with racism, he says, and to call use of atomic weapons on Japan as racist is to misunderstand the nature of the whole conflict. Ambrose also sees General Eisenhower as the most valuable leader of the 20th century. After writing 3 volumes and 2,000 pages about Richard Nixon, Ambrose learned to appreciate Nixon’s abilities, if recognizing his significant flaws and his inability to understand the American people or tragically himself.
Stephen Ambrose ends his book with these words. “We’ve made the world a better place and we will continue to do so. Our American Spirit comes from the Founding Fathers, was developed by Jackson, Grant, and both Roosevelts, taken abroad. That Spirit got us through September 11, 2001, and it will see us through the future.”
Thomas A. Skrenes
Bishop
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