Stephen Edward Ambrose was an American historian and biographer of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a longtime professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many bestselling volumes of American popular history.

Despite numerous well-documented allegations of plagiarism and inaccuracies in his writings, in a review of To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian for The New York Times, high school teacher William Everdell credited Ambrose with reaching "an important lay audience without endorsing its every prejudice." Ambrose received his Ph.D. in 1960 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In his final years, he faced charges of plagiarism for his books, with subsequent concerns about his research emerging after his death.