Stephen Ambrose- "Crazy Horse and Custer"

[iainm]

Hi everyone, it's my first time posting here, and I'd just like to ask if anyone had read the book "Crazy Horse and Custer", by Stephen Ambrose, and what you thought of it.
From my perspective, at times throughout the book he doesn't paint a very positive picture of Custer, but I admire the detail he goes into regarding his career and the parallel life of Crazy Horse.

My thanks to anyone who takes the time to reply to this

[Scout]

Welcome iainm,

I've read Ambrose's WW2 book and the Lewis and Clark book But I can honestly say I've never read "Crazy Horse and Custer" I understand though that he came under extreme criticisms for it. Someone told me he fictionalized a lot of it. I can't say but probably most Custer/LBH researchers and readers don't place this book anywhere in there lists of must reads. I don't think I saw it on any of the numerous book lists that were posted here.

Did you like it?

[iainm]

I did enjoy it, but I do think he fictionalised quite a bit of it, mainly in regards to Crazy Horse's life and what both men were thinking at different stages of their lives. It's a very readable book, as most of Ambrose's books are, but I don't think it's somewhere to start if you don't know that much about the subject.
Thankyou for the message, and the welcome, it's very much appreciated.

[Scout]

Larry McMurtry's 'Crazy Horse' is another book I have heard no one recommended. It is supposedly a serious study of the man. I understand from the reviews that he takes several quips at Ambrose in his book. Perhaps someone who has read it can comment.

[elisabeth]

Welcome, iainm.

I've read it the Ambrose book, and for what's it's worth from me I'd say you've summed it up very well. He strains a lot to keep the parallels going, and as you and Scout say, he fictionalises a fair bit. So not one to treat as serious source material; but an entertaining enough read.

I just picked up the Mari Sandoz Crazy Horse book today (very cheap, I'm happy to say) -- and from a first quick glance, she makes Ambrose look positively self-denying. She fictionalises not only thought-processes, but actual dialogue! I suspect that it, too, will be a pleasant enough read if taken as a novel, but hugely unreliable for fact ...

Are you aware of the new book by Kingsley Bray, Crazy Horse? That seems to be generally accepted as the most reliable on the subject to date. If it's Crazy Horse you're after, that is. Your first post kind of suggests that it's Custer himself you're more interested in -- in which case the two best to start with, i.e. the fairest, are probably Edgar I. Stewart's Custer's Luck and Robert Utley's Cavalier in Buckskin. (As I'm sure you know, if you're a fan!)

[Scout]

I've heard very good things about Bray's book. I need to check it out along with the Gall book. I would think it would be very hard to write on CH for lack of documented history. I've never understood why Mari Sandoz's books have been rated so high. 'Cheyenne Autmun' has tons of dialog and it makes you wonder if someone had followed the Indians around with a pad and pencil. Much of what she wrote was total fiction. Not bad if you accept it as such.

[George Armstrong Custer]

The problem with Ambrose's Crazy Horse & Custer is not so much what he fictionalised as what he plagiarised. A year or so before his death, Ambrose was 'outed' for having plagiarised whole chunks of his WWII books. This prompted a review by some academics of the Ambrose back catalogue - and sure enough, whole sections of Crazy Horse & Custer had been lifted almost verbatim from the work of earlier Custer historians. Ambrose's less than convincing defense was that his work load and output was such that he delegated a lot of the more 'mediocre' research to research students, and perhaps hadn't been diligent enough in checking their use of uncited sources. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that some of the passages lifted from other works repeated their errors!

ciao,
GAC

[elisabeth]

True, his big mistake there was lifting stuff wholesale without citing sources. The perpetuation of errors goes on merrily throughout Custerland, but most writers have the sense to say where they got their erroneous data from. (As I've said before with no doubt boring frequency, a great touchstone for accuracy is a writer's characterisation of Keogh. Any writer who picks up Dustin's "vicious drunken brute", or Van de Water's "swaggering, bibulous soldier of fortune", or Michno's "his Indian-fighting experience ... was almost nil" without examination or qualification is serving notice that they can't be bothered to do their own research on what they regard as minor and peripheral matters. And that, for me, rings warning bells with regard to everything else they say. If they're happy to take one error "off the peg" without questioning it, how many others have they similarly swallowed ...?)

[runaheap]

Hoka Hey! Throw this one away! I read this one several years ago,and as I am want to do, I picked it up and am re-reading it now(almost finished). I believe Scout hit the nail on the head. There is so much in this Book that just grabs you and makes you realize that you have read this somewhere else. I could probably spend days with my books spread out on the floor and looking up plagiarized paragraphs! I hate to speak ill of the long gone, but this seems more like a "Let's make Money" deal than anything close to Historical.

The only part in this Book that made me want to research would be this: How much was Custer invested in Wall Street(how much did he loose) and was the "Crash of 73" an influence on him discovering gold in the Black Hills in 74? It certainly was an emotional boost at a time when any good news would have been welcome.

[bc]

I don't know what the book says, but don't forget that Custer did not "discover" gold in the Black Hills. It had already been discovered. Custer even talks about the gold in one of his letters to Libbie while the expedition was enroute to the Black Hills.

The Black Hills expedition was about confirming the existence of the gold and exerting government influence over the Black Hills part and parcel with protecting the miners that were already there from NA attacks and to take control away from the NAs.

[biggordie]

bc is correct. The stated purpose of the expedition was to determine the proper location for a military post within the perimeter of the Hills, as well as a study of the flora and fauna and incidental mineral exploration along the way [how incidental is a horse of another color].

The findings of the exploration eventually led, or at least contributed to, the establishment of Fort Meade in 1878 .

Gordie

[runaheap]

bc, I should have been more direct in terms of Custers language in his official report about gold under every blade of grass. I think his language stirred the population a great deal. The book mentions that half of Bismark was ready to head for the Black Hills and the other half wanted to open Supply Stores. Also the insinuation that it was the desire of Sherman and Sheridan to organize a confrontation with the so-called "Hostiles" was the underlying reason for the expedition. That, and the Country's financial crisis seems to have been the catalyst. I would still like to know if Custer suffered any financial losses. His financial situation wasn't that great to begin with and just maybe it influenced his report.

[montrose]

Stephen Ambrose: Off the Rails
By Edson Strobridge
Mr. Strobridge is a retired public utility manager and one of the founders of the Order of Minor Historians, a group of history buffs. He is working on a biography of James H. Strobridge, superintendent of the Central Pacific Railroad, 1863-1869.

It is more than plagiarism, it's about truth and honesty.

When Simon & Schuster announced to the world that it was publishing a new book about the building of our nation's first transcontinental railroad written by Stephen Ambrose, railroad historians, at least the non-professional ones that I know the country over, were excited. At last, after so many poorly researched and poorly written books on the subject over the past hundred years we would have one that would be historically accurate. That did not to happen. Ambrose's book is no doubt one of the most innacurate and untrue records of that event yet.

By October 2000 several railroad historians across the country got together to share the errors and outright fabrications found in Nothing Like It in the World. I posted the results of our research on the Internet on the website, The Sins of Stephen Ambrose. We did not think to use the word "plagiarism" as our beef with Ambrose was that he had misconstrued some evidence and ignored other evidence completely. But make no mistake we also found many examples of plagiarized material throughout his book.

We used his references but soon found that he did not accurately record his sources nor the quotes he used. It became necessary to review at great length many of the sources that he did use, mostly other authors' work. We found that Ambrose had embellished many of the texts he copied with made-up stories, many of them outright lies. In one case Ambrose claimed to have used quotations from the memoirs of Charles Crocker, one of the Central Pacific Railroad bulders. But we discovered Ambrose had added his own made-up words. (The mistake occurs on page 347. You can see the documentation by clicking on The Sins of Stephen Ambrose, under the entry for that page.)

In another section Ambrose creates events, describing the building of tracks over snow tunnels, an impossibility which did not happen and credits a Ph. D. candidate, Alexander Saxton, as a source. But Saxton didn't say what Ambrose claimed he said. Ambrose (p. 204) wrote that "a temporary railbed was placed on top of the snow and material was lowered from the surface by steam hoist, sometimes as much as forty feet." Here's what Saxton wrote: "They tunneled in from the camps to reach the portals of the tunnel itself, and the work continued, although most of the materials now had to be lowered forty feet of more by steam hoist from the surface of the snow." Anyway, Ambrose shouldn't have been using Saxton as a source. Saxton's published paper included numerous bogus references. Saxton credits his version of the snow story to "Pacific Railway Commission V, 2577-2579." I have a copy of that original report and there is no mention of what he writes.

Ambrose goes on to describe the construction of the Central Pacific tracks around Cape Horn. He says Chinese laborers did their drilling and blasting from hanging baskets positioned over a rocky prominence. He even describes the actual conversations they had. The conversation he relates is between "a Chinese Foreman" and James H. Strobridge (my ancestor) who was the Superintendent of Construction. Not only is Ambrose's story totally made up, the event he describes never took place, as I explain in my biography of Strobridge.

The conversation is a part of the Cape Horn Legend that originated in a children's book thirty years ago, added to and embellished by other authors that he copied and embellished. Ambrose never discovered the truth as he never questioned those whose work he copied from.

Ambrose seems to have done little original research himself. He cites Wesley S. Griswold's A Work of Giants 71 times and John Hoyt Williams's A Great and Shining Road: The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroad 49 times and other authors more times than that.


"The Sins of Stephen Ambrose," released in December 2000, documents over fifty errors, copied texts, and made up stories and rebuts them all with the original documented sources. (The paper, offered to the media, was published in it's entirety by editor Gregory Franzwa of the Patrice Press in his quarterly newsletter "Folio" during 2001.) The Sacramento Bee published a front page story by Matthew Barrows outlining the objections to Ambrose's history. Ambrose was offered the opportunity to review and comment on the story before it was published. His son Hugh responded, "He's thought it over, and he's decided to say,'No Comment.'"

What really points out the hypocrisy of this man is comparing what he writes with his own high standards for historians. In the fall of 2000 in Forbes he wrote about the importance of truth in writing history in an article titled, "Old Soldiers Never Lie." In his first paragraph he wrote, "Nothing is relative, what happened, happened. What didn't happen, didn't, and to assert it [did] is to lie." Ambrose added: "Historians are obsessed with what is true. They have to prove what really happened; in quoting someone, they must demonstrate that person really did speak or write those exact words."

Ambrose includes this warning to the media: "And if journalists don't encourage the truth, historians eventually will." A hypocritical statement to say the least.

The media have focused over the past few weeks on the passages Ambrose borrowed from others. But by focusing on this the media have missed the point. Ambrose has been reckless and inaccurate in his writing. Ambrose's defenders continue to defend what he has done by claiming everyone does it, a little bit of plagiarism is OK (so long as one does not get caught by the media), the enemies of Ambrose are out to get him, etc.

Actually, only he and his publishers and booksellers benefit from his kind of history. His readers, students, teachers and those who believe in him as an honest historian are the losers.

The sorry thing in this entire debate is that if only Ambrose had claimed his books were historical novels, and reported the sources copied, his publishers and book sellers and purchasers would have been just as happy. Mr. Ambrose is an interesting story teller and no one can take that away from him. But he is not a very good historian.

[Diane Merkel]

I'm guessing that was written prior to Ambrose's 2002 death.

Ambrose is a difficult subject. On the one hand, he is to be praised for interesting the public in history through his books. On the other hard, allegations such as those above and many others are extremely troubling to put it mildly.

[Dark Cloud]

Ambrose annoyed me in one of his earliest works on Custer and Crazy Horse, essentially reduced to the fact that Crazy Horse outgeneralled Custer, which I think by memory is a quote. There were other things there that bugged me, and others, because they were, at the very least, questionable contentions.

Ambrose started out to be a historian and became a courtier. He was as bad as Brokaw in the Greatest Generation marketing gambit. If you read a lot of history, and I do, you come across passages you know you've seen, word for word, before, but most of the time cannot recall where, and god knows it isn't notated. Ambrose is not alone in plagiarism both by laziness and error and, well, theft. Virtually all of our great popular historians have been so accused. David McCullogh as well, I think.

John Keegan makes so many sweeping statements that are wrong, I've never understood how his reputation was earned.

It's one of the reasons I admire Tuchman, because she was a non-academic Pulitzer Prize winning best seller and the Olde Men would have been thrilled to find plagiarism or massive error in her works. They tried hard, but nothing. She hand wrote her notes and wrote the text all herself and is far and away the best writer in that genre in the 20th century and still. It can be done.