The American historian Stephen Ambrose, who has died of cancer aged 66, published his first work - on General Henry Halleck, President Lincoln's civil war chief of staff - four decades ago, while still a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin. More than a score of books were to follow, including biographies of presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, a history of West Point, and a volume on US foreign policy.
So Ambrose already had a successful career when, in 1992, he published Band Of Brothers: E Company 506th Regiment 101st Airborne From Normandy To Hitler's Eagle's Nest, based on interviews with the men of Easy Company. Short titles, or short books, were not his style. In 1994, D-Day June 6 1944: The Climactic Battle Of World War II, was published.
These works heralded a barrage, from Citizen Soldiers: The US Army From The Normandy Beaches To The Bulge To The Surrender Of Germany (1997) to The Wild Blue (2001), about Senator George McGovern's wartime career as a bomber pilot.
By the late 1990s, Ambrose's position as America's leading popular historian was confirmed. He became consultant on Steven Spielberg's film, Saving Private Ryan, which led to collaboration on the Spielberg-Tom Hanks television production, Band Of Brothers, and the second world war documentary, Price of Peace. Meanwhile, he joined the lecture circuit, and set up Stephen Ambrose Inc, which the Wall Street Journal described as "an extraordinarily successful business that conducts historical research, supports museums, produces and markets books and negotiates movie deals".
Books about the second world war started selling by VJ day. But half a century on, as old age was catching the generation that had survived, interest in their lives - and, crucially, what they had to say - was growing. There had been Studs Terkel's radical, questioning The Good War (1984), which had sought out combatants and civilians from many countries, but Ambrose tapped into how conservative, mainstream America wanted to celebrate the war.
His only agenda, he said two years ago, was that young Americans should realise that "freedom doesn't come free, that the blessings they've got by being Americans were paid for". It meant that, within American society, he began to assume a mantle similar to that of Sir Arthur Bryant in 1950s Britain. The difference was that, while Bryant was mourning a passed empire, Ambrose's readers were often celebrating one they saw as very much alive.
He also added other dimensions. His America had liberated the world, with look-ins from other nations; it had also enjoyed a heroic past in exploring itself, a subject covered in works like Undaunted Courage (1997).
Born in Decatur, Illinois, Ambrose was raised in Whitewater, Wisconsin, the second son of a doctor. There was no taste or culture there, he was to recall, and thus an early ambition was to get out of town. He did, going on to read medicine at the state university at Madison, though he soon switched to history.
In his early years, Ambrose identified with the left. He took his MA at Louisiana State University, before returning home to do his doctorate. It was from there that he wrote about Halleck, a study of a general who worked for a president, which was read, by Dwight Eisenhower, a general who had just retired as president. Ike invited Ambrose to work on his papers, and, between 1967 and 1992, a string of books on Ike followed. From 1960 until his retirement in 1995, he taught history at universities.
Latterly, Ambrose faced charges of plagiarism, vehemently denied. He is survived by his wife Moira, three sons and two daughters.
· Stephen E Ambrose, historian, born January 10 1936; died October 13 2002
