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SOUNDS FAMILIAR: Last week was a bad one for Stephen E. Ambrose. Only days after he had apologized for plagiarism in his latest book, the historian and best-selling author faced charges that an earlier book of his also contains passages lifted from another scholar. Then two more allegations surfaced.
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). Earlier that week, an article in The Weekly Standard by its executive editor, Fred Barnes, had revealed close similarities between Mr. Ambrose´s 2001 book about bomber pilots in World War II, The Wild Blue (Simon & Schuster), and Thomas Childers´s Wings of Morning (Addison Wesley, 1995).
In each...