5 Great Men Who Built Their Careers on Plagiarism | Cracked.com - 1 views
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Ambrose invented pop history. He was the historical advisor on Saving Private Ryan and wrote the book Band of Brothers, that miniseries about WWII that starred the guy from Office Space.
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In 1995, an almost unknown historian named Thomas Childers published the book Wings of Morning. It was a well-received but relatively obscure novel about the crew of a specific B-24 bomber during WWII. Ambrose was a fan of the book and, as a firm believer that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, he proceeded to plagiarize the fuck out of it for his hit 2001 novel, The Wild Blue, which was the account of a different group of B-24 crewmen. Ambrose ripped off whole passages of text and stole several sentences and descriptions word for word. Then he got his book published and just sort of hoped no one would notice.
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but fortunately for truth, he got caught. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard noticed what was going on and revealed it to the world. Ambrose was fast to respond. He had cited Childers' book in his bibliography (although he hadn't come close to listing everything he 'borrowed' from his fellow historian's work) and basically claimed that he'd just "forgotten" to attribute the stolen passages in the text, like he was supposed to.
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Mark Lewis, of Forbes.com, was not one of those people. He read the first story about Ambrose and, like a good investigative journalist, proceeded to tear apart everything the pop historian had written in his search for the truth.
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he found several blatant thefts in the book Crazy Horse and Custer, which Ambrose pretended to write in 1995. For that novel, Ambrose molested the work of esteemed historical writer Jay Monagham. Here's an excerpt from the Forbes article: MONAGHAM: "On August 28, 1859, Custer returned to West Point. Cadet James Barroll Washington, a great-great-grandnephew of George Washington, entered that year. He remembered hearing the crowd shout, 'Here comes Custer!' The name meant nothing to him, but he turned, and saw a slim, immature lad with unmilitary figure, slightly rounded shoulders, and gangling walk." AMBROSE: "When he returned to West Point, Cadet James B. Washington, a relative of George Washington, remembered hearing the crowd shout, 'Here comes Custer!' The name meant nothing to Washington, who was just entering the Academy, but he turned and saw a slim, immature lad with unmilitary figure, slightly rounded shoulders, and gangling walk, surrounded by back-slapping, laughing friends."
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n total, seven of his books were found to contain some degree of plagiarism. His fucking college thesis was even loaded down with other people's unattributed writing. The most famous historian in the world built his career on a foundation of deception. Did He Pay? He really didn't. Evidence of his wrongdoing came up very shortly before his death from lung cancer in 2002.
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T.S. Eliot wrote several great, enduring poems, such as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" which had a ridiculous title, and "The Hollow Men," which, we were depressed to discover, wasn't about a naked, invisible, murdering lunatic. Perhaps his greatest work was a poem entitled, "The Waste Land," which was a haunting statement of his disillusionment with the post-war era. It was a literary milestone, and is still celebrated today as one of the greatest works of poetry in history.
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The problem with this is that Eliot didn't write "The Waste Land." Not all of it anyway. As it turns out, the idea behind "The Waste Land," and a fair amount of its content, was plagiarized from an almost unknown American poet named Madison Cawein.
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Cawein worked hard all of his youth, scrimping and saving and putting aside enough money so that he could begin finally working on his true love: poetry. He put out several volumes of work that is very well regarded, but he never gained any recognition and died almost unknown. Which just goes to show you that, if you work hard in this country and believe in yourself, you'll die alone and under appreciated.
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Madison Cawein wasn't the only person Eliot stole from. This passage from "The Waste Land:" "The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne / Glowed on the marble," was slightly altered but still stolen from Shakespeare, who wrote, "The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne / Burn'd on the water". Eliot's line, "Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song," was stolen entirely from Edmund Spenser's "Prothalamion."
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Most of "The Waste Land" was just cobbled together out of quotes from other writers. Until very recently, most scholars have been happy to simply chalk these up as "allusions" to the work of other authors. For a long time, it was regarded as something poets just did, as a way of honoring their influences.
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Did He Pay? "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal" This is a quote from Eliot himself. You see, T.S. was rich, famous and beloved the world over. While he was alive, everyone just sort of ignored all of the evidence that he was a tremendous bastard. He died renowned as one of the greatest poets in all of history, which he was, but he was also a plagiarizing cockbag who denied a much worthier artist a place in history.
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For starters, his own university admits that his doctoral thesis, the very foundation of his career, was significantly plagiarized.
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Despite clear findings of plagiarism, the committee did not recommend he be posthumously stripped of his title, due to Dr. King's incredible services to the world. And due to their extreme fear of being beaten and castrated by hordes of angry MLK groupies.
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Not only was his dissertation plagiarized, but many of his student papers and sermons were stolen in whole or in part from other writers. The staff of the King Paper's Project at Stanford even admits that, "King's plagiarism was a general pattern evident in nearly all of his academic writings." Is That All? Perhaps the most notable example of King's plagiarism was the general tone, and several select lines from his famous "I Have a Dream," speech. Theodore Pappas presents a detailed accusation in his book, Plagiarism and the Culture War. Most of the issue centers around the closing lines.
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Did He Pay? Not during his lifetime. To be fair, it takes balls to accuse the greatest civil rights activist in history with plagiarism.