Editing Stephen E. Ambrose (section)

====Pacific Railroad====
A front-page article published in ''[[The Sacramento Bee]]'' on January 1, 2001, entitled "Area Historians Rail Against Inaccuracies in Book",<ref>Barrows, Matthew ''"Area Historians Rail Against Inaccuracies in Book"''. The ''Sacramento Bee'', January 1, 2001</ref> listed more than sixty instances identified as "significant errors, misstatements, and made-up quotes" in ''[[Nothing Like It in the World]]: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863–1869,'' Ambrose's [[Scholarly peer review|non-academic]] popular history about the construction of the [[First transcontinental railroad|Pacific Railroad]] between [[Council Bluffs, Iowa]]/[[Omaha, Nebraska]], and the [[San Francisco Bay]] at [[Alameda, California|Alameda]]/[[Oakland, California|Oakland]] via [[Sacramento, California]], which was published in August 2000. The discrepancies were documented in a detailed [[Fact checker|"fact-checking"]] paper compiled in December 2000 by three Western US railroad historians who are also experienced researchers, consultants, and collectors specializing in the Pacific Railroad and related topics.<ref name="hnn" /><ref name="sosea">Graves, G.J., Strobridge, E.T., & Sweet, C.N.[http://cprr.org/Museum/Books/Comments-Ambrose.html ''The Sins of Stephen E. Ambrose''] The Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum (CPRR.org), December 19, 2000</ref><ref>Stobridge E. (2002). [http://hnn.us/articles/541.html Stephen Ambrose: Off the Rails]. ''[[History News Network]]''.</ref>

On January 11, 2001, ''[[The Washington Post|Washington Post]]'' columnist [[Lloyd Grove]] reported in his column ''The Reliable Source'' that a co-worker had found a "serious historical error" in the same book that "a chastened Ambrose" promised to correct in future editions.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Grove |first1=Lloyd |title=The Reliable Source |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2001/01/11/the-reliable-source/b6454d5a-63f0-413f-85f1-4c8439f29c25/ |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=January 11, 2001 }}</ref> A number of journal reviews also sharply criticized the research and fact checking in the book. Reviewer Walter Nugent observed that it contained "annoying slips" such as mislabeled maps, inaccurate dates, geographical errors, and misidentified [[etymology|word origins]],<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Nugent |first1=Walter |last2=Ambrose |first2=Stephen E. |title=Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869 |journal=The Journal of American History |date=September 2001 |volume=88 |issue=2 |pages=657 |doi=10.2307/2675159 |jstor=2675159 }}</ref> while railroad historian Don L. Hofsommer agreed that the book "confuses facts" and that "The research might best be characterized as 'once over lightly'."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hofsommer |first1=Donovan L. |title=Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869, and: Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (review) |journal=Technology and Culture |date=2002 |volume=43 |issue=1 |pages=169–170 |doi=10.1353/tech.2002.0018 |s2cid=110233622 }}</ref>