This event has been postponed due to the COVID-19 response. New date TBD.
Check back here for more details later this year
Awarded Annually By The Rutgers Living History Society
2020 Recipient
Doug Stanton
Doug Stanton is a New York Times bestselling author, journalist, lecturer and screenwriter. As a journalist, he has worked as a contributing editor at Esquire and Outside and has written articles on history, travel, sports and entertainment for publications such as Sports Afield, Men's Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, TIME and Newsweek. He is the author of the nonfiction books In Harm’s Way, Horse Soldiers and The Odyssey of Echo Company. Drawing upon interviews of survivors of the World War II heavy cruiser U.S.S. Indianapolis, Stanton wrote The New York Times-bestseller In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors. Stanton’s Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan explores the experiences of Special Forces soldiers in the early days of the war in Afghanistan. In his research, he conducted over one hundred interviews of American service members, civilians and family members. Horse Soldiers appeared on the front page of the Sunday New York Times Book Review and spent three months at #1 on The New York Times bestseller list. Stanton used letters from the time as well as interviews with Vietnam veterans to write The Odyssey of Echo Company: The 1968 Tet Offensive and the Epic Battle to Survive the Vietnam War. Stanton has appeared on C-SPAN’s "American History," CNN, Discovery, A&E, History Channel, Fox News, NPR, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, C-SPAN’s BookTV, PBS and NBC Nightly News.
THE STEPHEN E. AMBROSE ORAL HISTORY AWARD is presented annually by The Rutgers University Living History Society to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the practice and/or use of oral history. The award is named for the late historian and author Stephen E. Ambrose, who helped guide the Rutgers Oral History Archives program at its inception in 1994 and
who served on its Academic Advisory Board for the balance of his life.
The RLHS Annual Meeting will take place on Friday, April 24, 2020 at the College Avenue Student Center, Multipurpose Room, at 126 College Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ 08901.
Brunch begins at 9:00 AM. The program begins at 10:00 AM.
RSVP by April 10, 2020 to Kathryn Rizzi at
Please mail your check to the Rutgers Oral History Archives, 1 Spring Street, Room 417, New Brunswick, NJ 08901.
Event parking will be in Lot 26, Lot 30 and the College Avenue Parking Deck. Visitors must register for parking at PARKING REGISTRATION
Past Recipients
Tom Brokaw - 2005
Steven Spielberg - 2006
Studs Terkel - 2007
Rick Atkinson - 2008
Ken Burns - 2009
David Isay - 2010
Michael & Elizabeth Norman - 2011
Isabel Wilkerson - 2012
Michael Beschloss - 2013
Peter Bergen - 2014
Jacqueline Dowd Hall - 2015
Ric Burns - 2016
John Whiteclay Chambers II - 2017
James Bradley - 2018
Deborah Gray White - 2019
