WU senior cites Ambrose's plagarism
Lara Marks saw possible plagiarism in Ambrose's work in 1999
Laura Lieberman
Issue date: 1/25/02 Section: News
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Over the past several weeks, documented proof that Ambrose had plagiarized many phrases in a multitude of his best-selling novels in recent years has caught the nation's attention. Such claims rang very familiar to Marks, who is now a senior majoring in History and American Culture Studies.
The Hewlett American Studies class on Lewis and Clark functioned on a two-semester system. In the fall, the students read many primary sources and the original journals of Lewis and Clark. Then, in the spring, the class focus changed as students read Ambrose's popular Undaunted Courage. History professor David Konig challenged his students to decide whether Ambrose's novel was work of history or historical fiction.
Marks recalled that during the semester Konig said he believed that in Undaunted Courage, Ambrose had borrowed a phrase from another historian without putting the sentence in quotation marks or citing him in the footnotes. Marks followed up on this idea, delving into the possibility of plagiarism in a best-selling novel by a wildly famous author.
"My professor put the idea in my head, and then I tried to find more," said Marks.
Marks explained that Konig wanted his students to confront the popularization of history the way that Ambrose did in many of his 30 books. For the final project, Marks chose to write a preface to Undaunted Courage that examined the scholarship of Ambrose's writing. Marks found many frustrating instances in the novel in which Ambrose either changed the information from Lewis and Clark's original journals or clearly copied passages from author Dumas Malone.
An example of one of the passages that Marks discovered shows what she referred to as "too close for comfort paraphrasing."
In Jefferson and his Time, volume 1, Malone wrote, "In a country without large settlements and where plantation seats were far apart, riding was not a matter of occasional diversion but of necessity, and good horsemanship was taken for granted among the gentry."
In Undaunted Courage, Ambrose wrote, "In a country of vast estates… with plantation seats far apart, riding was not a matter of sport or diversion but of necessity… Good horsemanship was taken for granted among the gentry."
