Stephen Ambrose

Biographer and Historian

I started off with Alice with Eisenhower. We did the Eisenhower book, the two volumes together. And then she said, "Steve, you've got to do Nixon." I said, "Alice, I don't even like Nixon. I've never liked the guy. He's just the opposite of spontaneous. Everything he does is contrived. The only goal he has is self-advancement. He's just not the kind of guy that I want to spend that kind of time with. He's not the kind of guy I'd want to go backpacking with." And she said, "Where else are you going to find a bigger challenge than to do a good job on the life of a man that you don't like or even approve of?" Well, she caught me with that. She caught me with that just as effectively as Mr. Hesseltine caught me with the, "You're going to make a contribution to the world's knowledge." And I thought, "All right, Alice. I'll show you. I'll go out and do a book on Nixon that is not stabbing him in the back and not putting him on a pedestal, but is attempting to get at his character, which is virtually impossible." I think you've got to be Shakespeare to get Dick Nixon's character. But as Samuel Johnson says -- my favorite line of advice for a biographer -- "We cannot look into the hearts of men, but their actions are open to observation."
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