Stephen Ambrose: The Historian Who Gave New Orleans Its Greatest Museum

The Historian Who Made History Feel Like a Story

Stephen Ambrose arrived at the University of New Orleans in 1971 and spent the next three decades turning the city into a headquarters for popular American history. He was a professor, yes, but the word undersells what he actually did. Ambrose was a storyteller who happened to work with facts — a historian who believed that the past was too important and too thrilling to be locked away in academic journals that only other professors would read.

His books sold millions. "Band of Brothers," about Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division, became an HBO miniseries that introduced a generation to the reality of World War II. "D-Day: June 6, 1944" and "Citizen Soldiers" brought the European theater to life with the voices of the men who fought there. "Undaunted Courage" traced Lewis and Clark's expedition across the continent. Ambrose wrote history the way New Orleans tells stories — with drama, with humanity, with the understanding that the people involved mattered more than the dates.

The Museum

Ambrose's greatest legacy sits on Magazine Street in the Warehouse District. He was the driving force behind the creation of the National D-Day Museum, which opened on June 6, 2000, the 56th anniversary of the Normandy invasion. The museum was built in New Orleans because of Andrew Higgins, the local boat builder whose landing craft made the D-Day invasion possible. Ambrose made the connection, raised the money, and championed the project until it became reality.

In 2003, Congress designated it the National World War II Museum, expanding its mission to cover the entire war. Today it is the top-rated museum in the United States, drawing over a million visitors a year. It exists because a history professor in New Orleans believed that the story of the Greatest Generation deserved a permanent home, and that home belonged in the city that built the boats.

Controversy and Legacy

Ambrose's later years were complicated by accusations of plagiarism — passages in several of his books that closely mirrored the work of other historians without proper attribution. The controversy was real and serious, and it tarnished a reputation built over decades. He died of lung cancer in 2002, at 66, before the full scope of the accusations had been resolved.

But walk through the National World War II Museum on any given day and watch the faces of the visitors — the teenagers reading letters from soldiers, the veterans wiping their eyes in the galleries, the families standing in front of a restored Higgins boat — and the legacy is clear. Ambrose gave New Orleans an institution that matters, and he gave American history a popular voice that made millions of people care about the past. The footnotes were sometimes sloppy. The mission never was.