The Untold History of the United States

Written by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick

Narrated by Peter Berkrot

“Indispensable… There is much here to reflect upon.” —President Mikhail Gorbachev

“As riveting, eye-opening, and thought-provoking as any history book you will ever read. . . . Can’t recommend it highly enough.” —Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian

“Finally, a book with the guts to challenge the accepted narrative of recent American history.” —Bill Maher

The New York Times bestselling companion to the Showtime documentary series now streaming on Netflix, updated to cover the past five years.

A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

In this riveting companion to their astonishing documentary series—including a new chapter covering Obama’s second term, Trump’s first year and a half, climate change, nuclear winter, Korea, Russia, Iran, China, Lybia, ISIS, Syria, and more—Academy Award–winning director Oliver Stone and renowned historian Peter Kuznick challenge prevailing orthodoxies to reveal the dark truth about the rise and fall of American imperialism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Jun 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781480507005

Oliver Stone

Oliver Stone is an Academy Award-winning director, screenwriter and producer. He has written and directed some of the most iconic Hollywood films of all time, from Midnight Express and Platoon to Scarface and Natural Born Killers. Stone is also the co-author of The Untold History of the United States.

Reviews for The Untold History of the United States

[annbury_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Wow! The Untold History of the United States will tell you lots and lots and LOTS that you didn't hear in school. And it all shows that the U.S. is not a selfless, noble, exception to the rule that great powers behave badly. The book will make some readers very angry; national myths are dearly held. And it will make some others very skeptical. This is not an unbiased work, and there is a lot of selectivity about what facts are included (and what are not). This book, however, well worth reading, whether or not you agree with it. Yes, it's biased,but so is most of the U.S. history we read -- only biased the other way. Moving the point of view helps to clarify current U.S. policy issues. For example, do we really need to have a military establishment that is as powerful as all the rest of the military establishments in the world? The book begins around 1900, as the European powers scrambled for de jure control of Africa and anything else that wasn't nailed down. At that point, the U.S. (perhaps more subtly) was establishing de facto control of much of Latin America and the Caribbean. The most egregious U.S. imperialist, the authors argue, was not TR, but Woodrow Wilson. They put this in the context of U.S. corporate interests, which they also argue played a key role in getting the U.S. into World War I. The next part of the book looks at the interwar period and at World War II. Mssrs. Stone and Kuznick show the degree to which anti-communism blinkered U.S. policies. They also remind us of how little of World War II -- in Europe -- was fought by the U.S., and of how much was fought by the Soviet Union. The discussion of the immediate post-war period is the most interesting in the book. The authors present what is to me a convincing case that dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was NOT necessary. The Japanese, they argue, were desperately looking for a way to surrender, because they were terrified of a Russian invasion. Many U.S. generals and politicos argued against the bombs. One is left with the conclusion that the main reason for the bombs was to scare the Soviets. From there, the authors proceed to the emergence of the cold war, which they regard as largely the fault of the U.S. They understate, I think, the "contribution" of Stalin's Soviet Union, but by encouraging the reader to look at the cold war from a Soviet point of view they provide an informative vantage point. No real story has only one side.The part of the book which covers our more recent wars -- Vietnam, and then the Middle East -- is less startling, because U.S. miscalculation and cruelties in those wars have been more widely reported than those in earlier periods. Also, it is in the more recent period that the book seems to me most seriously biased; per Mssrs. Stone and Kuznick, no American president since John Kennedy has done anything that was not almost unequivocally evil.There are faults in this book. It seems to me to overstate the iniquities of the U.S., to understate the bloody-mindedness of our enemies, and to underestimate the fact that politicians have to deal with social and economic realities. The only real heroes in the book are Henry Wallace and Mikhail Gorbachev -- FDR comes off as a sometime waffler, while JFK comes off as someone who experienced a major change in view shortly before being killed. Also, the book does in some instances take comments out of context, and/or leave off important explanatory information. I look forward to reading the upcoming review in The New York Review of Books, which is (internet gossip reports) most unfavorable.Despite these qualifications, I think that this is a very valuable book -- though I fear that it may not be read much outside liberal circles.

[Sam Barnett · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Quite an excellent look at everything from WWI to 2018. Certainly Stone has his biases, but they seem relatively in check in the broad book.

[Boyd Thompson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This should be taught in every high school civics class. An exceptional work.

[dekesolomon · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Regarding The Untold History of the United States: On the fold at the back of the dustjacket it is written that author “Peter Kuznick is a professor of history and director of the award-winning Nuclear Studies Institute of American University . . . currently serving his third term as distinguished lecturer with the Organization of American Historians. He has written extensively about science and politics, nuclear history, and Cold War culture.” Thus I feel safe in calling Kuznick a noted historian.Co-author Oliver Stone, on the other hand, is an aging Vietnam grunt and pothead who morphed into one of our greatest Hollywood auteurs. Mr. Stone has given us five or six of the best motion pictures I've seen in my life. The stories Stone chooses to tell have earned him the undying enmity of politicians, political pundits, film critics and others who comment on culture and current events from well-padded perches at the right end of the political spectrum. Consequently, Americans who believe the likes of George Will and Charles Krauthammer and Newt Gingrich all know Mr. Stone for a crackpot, left-wing, commie-loving, cry-baby and curmudgeon, a liar who ought to be euthanized for the good of America. For those reasons, finding Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick credited as co-authors of Untold History both pleased and dismayed me.What pleased me was the idea that Stone's iconoclastic take on American history would provide me with plenty of things to chew on at night, when I huddle under my blankets with my helmet, my ordnance and my savage attack cat, Mitzi. I was pleased, too, with Kuznick's credentials in Nuclear Studies and Cold War culture. I figured Kuznick and Stone together would come up with some facts concerning events about which I believed I already knew everything worth knowing. Too bad none of my iconos got clasted, but the good news there is that I did get some gob-stopping bits of trivia about the administrations of Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, Carter, et al.What dismays me about Untold History is that it's good work by a couple of talented people and it will probably come to nothing. Those who like and respect Oliver Stone will be willing to buy and read Untold History. Those who appreciate Mr. Kuznick's credentials will probably believe what they read in the book.Right-wingers, who despise Stone, will dismiss Kuznick's credentials and they will never believe that President Harry S. Truman was a ignorant, foul-mouthed jerk whose closest confident was a vicious, half-wit, hick-town political fixer with a 4th-grade education. Nor will they believe that Truman slavered for a chance to use the A-bomb – and did use it when he knew it wasn't needed – just so he could show tough to Joe Stalin. They will also refuse to believe that affable, grandfatherly President Dwight David Eisenhower was a Frankenstein in the White House: he spent nearly the whole of his presidency working to empower the monstrous, “military-industrial complex” that he warned us about in his farewell speech.All of those things and many more are stated flatly or strongly implied by the content of Untold History. Evidence to support such statements is there in plenty. Those who doubt it can look up sources cited in the endnotes and learn the truth for themselves. But almost few will take the trouble. The vast majority of Americans won't read Untold History because they will never hear of the book and wouldn't bother if they did know of it. As well expect them to go to the library as expect them to take off, en masse, and fly to the moon.Still there is some hope that news of Untold History will penetrate the thick skull of America. The book is companion volume to a 10-part documentary series that's being aired on the Showtime Network (Jan. 15 – Feb. 05, 2013) as I write. Millions of people may see all or parts of it there. What they will do with what they learn is anybody's guess. I expect they will call out for pizza. There are things about Untold History that I don't like. For example: authors Stone and Kuznick pound hell out of President Jimmy Carter but hardly lay a glove on Bubba Clinton, who is on my personal list as one of the worst stinkers that ever lived in the White House. In a similar vein, Stone and Kuznick seem unconvinced that Barack Obama is a wretched, conniving, murderer, a two-faced liar, traitor and sneak. On the whole, however, I have to hand it to the authors for a good job of laying blame where blame is due.Solomon sez: Anybody wants to know how the wealth of America is (was, has been) stolen and squandered by a top-hatful of greedy, paranoid, capitalist warmongers who live at the top of government, banking and industry ought to buy and read The Untold History of the United States. It could and should make readers angry, but it will not put readers to sleep.

[jessica · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Liberal garbage. Don't waste your time. I wish I hadn't.

[matthew · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

If you read only one history book, I hope it isn’t this one.