A people’s history of the American Empire, adapted for the next generation of young history buffs.
There is history as we know it. And there is history we should have known.
Adapted by Newbery Honor recipient Susan Campbell Bartoletti from the bestselling book (and companion to the Showtime documentary) The Untold History of the United States by Academy Award–winning director Oliver Stone and renowned historian Peter Kuznick, this first of four volumes presents young readers with a powerful and provocative look at the past century of American imperialism.
This is not the kind of history taught in schools or normally presented on television or in popular movies. This riveting young readers’ edition challenges prevailing orthodoxies to reveal the dark reality about the rise and fall of the American empire for curious, budding historians who are hungry for the truth. Based on the latest archival findings and recently declassified information, this four-volume series will come as a surprise to the vast majority of students and their teachers—and that’s precisely why these books are such crucial counterpoints to today’s history textbooks.
Complete with photos, illustrations, and little-known documents, this first of four volumes covers crucial moments in American history from the late nineteenth century to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Customer Reviews
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
A Magnificent Contribution
By V. Bryant
This book is simply a wonderful contribution to the education of our country's young minds...all history and no propaganda. Children who are fortunate enough to have this in their curriculum will develop needed critical thinking skills that will enable them to contribute to solving the many complex problems that face the United States. There is indeed hope for the future when our children are taught the truth that enables them to understand how the United States is viewed in the world and why. BRAVO!!
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful.The Basis of a Critique
By Sam Kierstead
There is something about the historical narrative proposed by Peter Kuznick and Oliver Stone that hits the reader square in the face. Instead of working to repair what has already been told, the authors take the heretical route of legitimately substantiating an entirely different account of events. It is this accounting that is foundationally important to any honest historical education. Intellectually debased by an insufficiently critical public education, young adults like myself emerge from the University ideologically ripe for cooptation and bewilderment by unending misinformation and distortion as it parades across media space.The Untold History of the United States attempts to remedy this deplorable state of affairs for those of us unable to recoup our primary education. However, Kuznick and Stone have gone multiple steps further. In addition to the twelve-part documentary series, the Young Readers Edition of Untold History aims at providing English-speaking young people with the historical tools to break through the tired old tropes of American Exceptionalism and Benevolence. It seems like an exercise in stating the obvious to say that we ought not mislead the next generation, yet our discursive tradition constantly reifies national myths, continuing to produce a citizenry incapable of challenging established institutions and national ideologies. This series of historical volumes works to undo the emaciation of the American political perspective by introducing a substantive and badly needed critique of the world’s most destructive and violent State—the USA.The evidence presented is undoubtedly a history revised—a response to a dominant narrative in desperate need of revision. Like Howard Zinn before them, Kuznick and Stone have defied accepted wisdoms and accounts handed down from elite institutions. They offer your children and our young ones an opportunity to object in a meaningful way. An opportunity to ground systemic critique, not only in the contemporary crimes of the current power structure, but also in the patterns and trends of US Imperial power in the 20th Century.Read this book to your children. Not only will the Young Readers Edition give them perspectives entirely unavailable in most public educational institutions, but it will also cause you to question your own understandings of the global system. So often the phrase “power to the people” is couched in a purely rhetorical context that renders it almost meaningless. However, the richness of the material in Untold History is empowering in a very real way. If successful, it will change and shape minds for years to come.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.Five Stars
By Natalie
That's is the story about America known to the rest of the world not to Americans.
