It's been a big year for the latter.

The summer of 2001 witnessed the flap over Mount Holyoke historian Joe Ellis's Vietnam war record. Despite a hiatus (during which we all took time out for the Gary Condit affair and related political scandals before terror and war drove almost all other stories from the front pages), historical errors and controversies are back in the news.

the Ambrose collector

Stephen Ambrose has become one of our most popular American historians, known for his gripping narratives and vivid descriptions (to use the appropriate clichés), particularly of the World War II era. It now turns out that some of his more striking passages were lifted from the works of other authors. Ambrose soon acknowledged and apologized for his error, claiming the copying was inadvertent. Still, as several observers have pointed out, this excuse wouldn't hold up for a moment in an undergraduate classroom.
A number of critics argue that the issue extends beyond the merely personal. Some historians attribute the problem to the haste of overproduction. Others, however, point to the nature of popular history itself: Because it relies for its appeal on style more than substance, originality and critical standards are relegated to a subsidiary role.

• Stephen Ambrose And the Rights Of Passage
(Washinton Post, January 11, 2002) By Ken Ringle
"In a Growing List of His Books, Others' History Repeats Itself:

"What can be said about Stephen Ambrose, the flag-wrapped historian of Lewis and Clark, Eisenhower and Nixon and The Greatest Generation, now that he’s being accused of plagiarism? Well, there’s this: As any writer knows, when you start cranking out books as fast as assembly lines crank out cars, there’s a danger that the books, like the cars, will all start looking alike. And that you may find yourself pressed into hurriedly borrowing parts from similar models."

• As Historian's Fame Grows, So Does Attention to Sources
(NY Times, January 11, 2002) By David D. Kirkpatrick.
"While conceding inappropriate use of text, Stephen E. Ambrose defended his overall methods."

• Ambrose Sorry for Copying Phrases
(NY Times, January 6, 2002). By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK "Historian Stephen Ambrose has acknowledged that sentences and phrases in his new book 'The Wild Blue' were copied from a work by another historian."

• Author Admits He Lifted Lines From '95 Book
(NY Times, January 6, 2002). By David D. Kirkpatrick.
"Stephen E. Ambrose apologized for copying sentences and phrases in his best-selling book 'The Wild Blue' from another historian's earlier work."

No wonder she always looks so serious
The latest victim is Doris Kearns Goodwin, popular historian and ever-earnest and omnipresent guest on television shows devoted to what passes for political analysis:

• "Historian Goodwin Settled With Author" (AP, January 22, 2002)
"Doris Kearns Goodwin said she reached a private settlement several years ago with an author who complained she wasn't properly credited for passages Goodwin included in a 1987 book about the Kennedys.
"It was 'absolutely not' plagiarism, Goodwin said.
"Goodwin talked about the settlement in Tuesday's editions of The Boston Globe after The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, reported Goodwin had borrowed phrases from three authors in her book 'The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys.'
Two weeks earlier, the magazine had accused historian Stephen Ambrose of stealing passages from another author for his latest novel, 'The Wild Blue.' Ambrose later issued an apology to the author."

• "Historian Says Publisher Quickly Settled Copying Dispute" (NY Times, January 23, 2002) By David D. Kirkpatrick.
"Doris Kearns Goodwin acknowledged that her 1987 book, 'The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys,' echoed other works."

Historian's Prizewinning Book on Guns Is Embroiled in a Scandal (NY Times, December 8, 2001), by Robert F. Worth.
"Only a year ago, Michael A. Bellesiles was well on his way to becoming an academic superstar. He had just published a book with a startling thesis: very few people owned working guns in colonial America. Stepping into the ferocious national debate over guns and the meaning of the Second Amendment, Mr. Bellesiles, a history professor at Emory University in Atlanta, caused a sensation. Legal scholars said his prize-winning book could influence federal court cases challenging gun laws. Bellesiles denies that the errors in 'Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture' are more serious than the ones found in any lengthy and serious work of scholarship."

Theft as the sincerest form of flattery?

Lest readers somehow conclude that historians are especially poor representatives of the human species, we should point out that fiction writers, too, show moral and intellectual lapses:

"Novelist Questioned on Plagiarism" (AP, 25 January 2002)
"Another allegation of plagiarism has emerged, this one involving Olaf Olafsson, a novelist and Time Warner executive who said he wanted to 'pay tribute' to another writer by borrowing from her work."