FRIENDS

...Milton Eisenhower went on to become the general's lifelong adviser...

...I believe you should keep your troubles to yourself," Ambrose quotes Nixon as saying...

...And it was with thoughts like these, according to Ambrose, that Nixon "disqualified himself for love by refusing to ever open himself to it...

...Some people are different...

...Ambrose himself has never seen combat, but he details from personal experience the kind of close male bonds that can form apart from war in moving chapters on his own brother, friends, and father...

...The one [gift] that he lacked was character...

...When Lewis was chosen to lead an expedition across the western two-thirds of the continent, he immediately thought of Clark, who had been his commanding officer during six months in the army...

...As the author of a three-volume biography of the president, Ambrose knows the man's life well...

...They always referred to each other as "Captain Lewis" and "Captain Clark" and, according to Ambrose, there was never a cross word between them during their twenty-eight month trip...

...Not knowing what was happening to his friend, Clark did not come, and later that night, Lewis took his own life...

...In the course of his long career, he's interviewed hundreds of veterans about what kept them going in battle, and in such popular and highly acclaimed volumes as the 1993 B^'nd of ^^oth^-rs: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Stephanie Deutsch is a writer living in Washington, D.C...

...And now, with Comrades: Brothers, Fathers, Heroes, Sons, Pals, Ambrose has written his paean to that sort of friendship, a quirky, uneven, personal book about the male camaraderie that is "one of the joys of my adult life...

...Ike didn't always take his brother's advice—Milton was opposed to the 1956 presidential reelection bid, for example—but he always knew he had in Milton an affectionate, intelligent, discreet sounding board for his ideas...

...For all his efforts and intentions, Clark could not save Lewis...

...He could no more sacrifice himself in friendship, Ambrose concludes, "than he could bring himself to love, trust, and respect the American people...

...Chapters on men aided by the friendship of their brothers—Dwight Eisenhower and George Custer—are followed by chapters on two intense and difficult friendships: Eisenhower and George Patton, and the Sioux warriors Crazy Horse and He Dog...

...The relations Ambrose writes about show what affection can become when combined with loyalty, dignity, honesty, and courage—in short, with character...

...Nixon didn't just despise virtue, in Ambrose's view...

...The friendships he describes are the opposite of "I feel your pain" sentimentality...

...The legendary friendship of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark is profiled, together with an account of the wartime friendships of Easy Company in the 101st Airborne and the postwar friendships of British, American, and German veterans...

...Army from the Normandy Beaches to Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, he discovered that it was, in part, pride in their country and a sense of purpose they found hard to talk about...

...When Clark's commission as captain did not come through, Lewis insisted that they represent to their men that they were of equal rank...

...They had utter trust in each other...

...Lewis and Clark provoke Ambrose to his most lyrical description of friend-ship—and to his clearest recognition of the limitations of friendship as well...

...But he discovered that it was also, in part, an experience they found it easy to describe: the sustaining friendship of the men with whom they served...

...Perfect friendship is rarely achieved, but at its height it is an ecstasy," he writes...

...That is why Nixon despised virtue and railed against it...

...Who can say that Nixon's childhood was in any way so exceptional that it scarred him for life...

...He quotes Heraclitus—"A man's character is his fate"—and he finds our friendships inextricably linked to our characters...

...He would set things straight...

...Nixon's parents were stern, he writes, but "who can say how much love is enough...

...It shows, for instance, in Ambrose's account of the time he and his wife "got into a bad situation with the booze"— when his friend John Holcomb, who had coped courageously with his own drinking problem, "was a source of strength and inspiration...

...He always did...

...In all the friendships he describes, his own and those drawn from history, Ambrose celebrates this willingness to open up to others, to reveal vulnerability as well as strength, and to trust...

...Like a talent for throwing a baseball or telling stories, the character that shows in friendship may be strengthened or left to wither away...

...FRIENDS Stephen Ambrose on male camaraderie By Stephanie Deutsch The historian Stephen Ambrose has devoted his life's work to studying men—men like the American soldiers who won the Second World War...

...it was lack of character: Nixon had gifts in abundance— brains, acceptably nice looks, good health, a marvelous memory, knowledge, superb acting ability and stage presence, a faithful family and awesome willpower, among others...

...And he has come to see that one character flaw more than any other precipitated Nixon's downfall: the incapacity to make friends...

...They had," Ambrose decides, "an utter trust in the other's esteem and love...

...Ambrose rejects "the theme of the unloved boy...

...they are a function of maturity...

...But character is not simply a static gift of the gods...

...Virtue comes from character...

...Eisenhower grew up with five brothers for whom "competition was the natural order of things": They fought, one said, "for the sheer joy of slugging one another...

...their friendship set the tone for the expedition and made possible its extraordinary success...

...In a series of twelve chapters, Comrades presents male friendships from history and from the author's own life, discovering that what distinguishes friends is a willingness to reach beyond self to share both joy and pain...

...Eagle's Nest and the 1997 Citizen Soldiers: The U.S...

...Meriwether Lewis and William Clark shared what Ambrose calls "the best-known and the most productive friendship in American history...

...But he was not with him when, en route to Washington to try to straighten out his tangled financial affairs, Lewis sat on a hillside on the Natchez Trail, telling his servant that "General Clark . . . was coming on...

...Henry Kissinger saw Nixon as having "a congenital inability ever to confide totally in anyone," and said that he had "no truly close friends...

...But even at its highest, friendship is human, not godlike...

...Some people think it's good therapy to sit with a close friend and, you know, just spill your guts...

...For Lewis and Clark, it was such an ecstasy, and the critical factor in their great success...

...By this time, Lewis had come to outrank Clark, but he offered his friend co-command of the expedition anyway...

...he despised people, which is why he never wanted to be close to anyone except his daughters and, possibly, his wife...

...They are what builds character—and what rewards it as well...

...When Lewis fell prey to deep depression, Clark lent him money and opened his home to him...

...And for the men willing to venture into them, intimate friendships are not just the manifestations of character...

...Repeatedly, Ambrose contrasts Nixon with Eisenhower, a man with many warm friendships and a gift for leadership...

...Combat can help form friendships, but so can peacetime experience...

...The problem for Nixon was not lack of love...

...The most telling chapter, however, is that on Richard Nixon, entitled "Nary a Friend...