Subtitled (incorrectly) "The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869", I knew I was taking a risk reading an Ambrose book, but the subject was compelling to me. I like trains, I like history, particularly 19th Century American History, so I figured I would give this a try.Not one o...
As a history lover, and as someone who loves not getting flamed on Goodreads, I am loathe to say what I am about to say. However, as someone who finds it impossible not to say what I feel like saying, I’ll just go ahead and say it: I don’t like Stephen Ambrose. No, no, no! Not like that. I didn’t...
On July 4th 1876, the United States of America was celebrating its centenary while at the heights of influence and power. In the first one hundred years since its independence, the United States had fended off two British invasions, survived a brutal Civil War, and joined both its oceanic shoreli...
I'm somewhat surprised that Stephen Ambrose was an actual historian, back before the plagiarism scandals and shoddy work that put the period on his career. This is the first of his WW2 oral histories, written fresh on the heels of 20 years of Eisenhower research and the 40th Anniversary of D-Day....
You know it was bad, but just how awful? It is tough to read some of these stories. I knew about trench foot, but our own army not supplying men with warm enough clothes? It was truly shameful. I enjoyed the first 250 pages, but the real, true suffering starts after that and I will never feel the...
The place you read Stephen Ambrose's new book, The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew The B-24s Over Germany, is on an airplane, a comfortable passenger jet, say, a Delta 737, built with care and precision by the Boeing folks in their picturesque facility in Seattle. the kind that has the littl...
Dwight D. Eisenhower's public image was that of a wide-grinning Daddy Warbucks who preferred the golf course over the cabinet room. He was perceived as a military bureaucrat who never held a combat command. A Republican sandwiched between two Democratic administrations, he lacked the political vi...
It had been utilized in that way in Normandy and during the first ten days in Holland. From the beginning of October until almost the end of November 1944, however, it would be involved in static, trench warfare, more reminiscent of World War I than World War II.The area in which it fought was a ...
Like the top politicians, he had a remarkable memory for facts and figures, geography, who owed what favors or money to whom, the names of his competitors and his followers and their wives. He knew who had taken what position on this or that issue, and when, and what his own position had been. Th...
(2) The political, to the occupation of Rome. (3) The daft, from the occupation of Rome onwards.”1 By early October 1943, AFHQ had achieved the objectives set for it in Italy. The country itself had left the Axis and joined the Allies. The Germans had evacuated Sardinia and Corsica. The Allies oc...
A beautiful day in Russia. At Adana, Turkey, Francis Gary Powers dresses in his pressurized flying suit, climbs into the cockpit of his plane, and takes off for Bodo, Norway. Midway through an uneventful flight there is a flash, followed by a boom and an explosion. The U-2 rocks, starts to crash....