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Features editor
Barbara Lowell (228) 896-2389 or blowell@sunherald.com
Movies, B-2 Television, B-4 Comics, B-5
www,sunherald.com/8iving
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15,2002
STEPHEN AMBROSE, 193&-2002
Hero worshipper, historian
THE
QUOTABLE
AMBROSE
On the act of writing: ?What drives me is curiosity. I want to know how this or that was done ? Lewis and Clark getting to the Pacific; the GIs on D-Day, Crazy Horse?s victory over George Custer at the Little Big Horn; the making of an elite company in the 101st Airborne, and so on. And I?ve found that if I want to know, I?ve got to do the research and then write it up myself. For me, the act of writing is the act of learning.?
On becoming a historian: ?At the University of Wisconsin, I started as a pre-med, but after a course on American history with William B. Hesseltine, I switched my major. He was a great teacher of writing, with firm rules such as abandon chronology at your peril; use the active voice; avoid adverbs whenever possible; be frugal with adjectives, as they are but the salt and pepper for the meat (nouns).
Author honored soldiers, presented gripping past
By BRETT MARTEL
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW ORLEANS ? Stephen E. Ambrose resembled the soldiers in his best-selling World War II books in at least one respect he refused to allow his likely death to distract him from his work.
Only days after the release of his latest book and with another book nearing publication, Ambrose died after a six-month battle with lung cancer. He was 66.
His last book, ?To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian,? which Ambrose called his love song to his country, is set for release Nov. 19. He didn?t begin writing it until after his cancer diagnosis in April. He died on Sunday.
?I knew from his family that his diagnosis was grim, but you wouldn?t learn that from him,? said New Hampshire filmmaker Dayton Duncan, who coproduced a public television documentary with Ken Bums about American explorers Lewis and Clark. ?He was talking about the work he was doing... not dwelling on the grim side of his health.?
Family members were with Ambrose, a longtime smoker, when he died at a Bay St Louis hospital, said the author?s son, Hugh.
For much of his career, Ambrose was a little-known history professor. He burst onto the best-sellers list less than a decade ago with his 1994 book
His books
Books by historian Stephen Ambrose:
?	?To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian,? release date Nov. 19, 2002.
?	?The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today" (With Sam Abell and Douglas Brinkley), 2002.
?	?The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s over Germany,? 2001.
?	?Nothing Like It In the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869,? 2000.
?	?Comrades: Brothers,
Fathers, Heroes, Sons, Pals,? 1999.
?	?Witness to America: An Illustrated Documentary History of the United States from the Revolution to Today? (with Douglas Brinkley), 1999.
?	?Lewis & Clark: Voyage of Discovery,? -1998.
?	?The Victors: Eisenhower