A Historian Meets His Little Bighorn

Abstract

According to two articles published last week on the Web site Forbes.com, Mr. Ambrose included passages from other authors' works in his books Crazy Horse and Custer (Doubleday, 1975), Citizen Soldiers (Simon & Schuster, 1997), and Nixon: Ruin and Recovery: 1973- 1990 (Simon & Schuster, 1991). In each of the four cases, Mr. Ambrose listed the other author's book in his bibliography but did not credit the author for writing key phrases that appeared in his text. The Forbes.com report revealing that case prompted e-mail messages from readers, including a note from Joseph Balkoski, a military historian who said Citizen Soldiers contained lines from his 1989 book Beyond the Beachhead (Stackpole Books).