The Untold History of the United States, Volume 1: Young Readers Edition, 1898-1945

The Untold History of the United States #1

by Oliver Stone, Peter Kuznick

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

400 pages, Hardcover

First published September 2, 2014

About the author

Oliver Stone is the multiple Oscar-winning writer and director of Platoon, JFK, Born on the Fourth of July, Natural Born Killer, Midnight Express, and many other films.

Reviews

[Richie Partington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richie’s Picks: THE UNTOLD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, YOUNG READERS EDITION, VOLUME 1 1898-1945 by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, adapted by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, Atheneum, December 2014, 400p., ISBN: 978-1-4814-2173-7

“Party leaders made sure they had an iron grip on the convention, but the rank-and-file Democrats staged a rebellion. On the convention floor, an uproarious demonstration for Wallace broke out. In the midst of the demonstration, Florida Senator Claude Pepper realized that if he got Wallace’s name into nomination that night, Wallace would sweep the convention and he would be back on the ticket as vice president.
“As the demonstration went on, Pepper jumped to his feet, and fought his way through the crowd. Just five more feet, and he would reach the microphone and shout Wallace’s name for nomination.
“Boss Ed Kelly, the mayor of Chicago, spotted Pepper. He couldn’t allow Pepper to reach the microphone and thwart the bosses’ underhanded scheme. He had to stop Pepper.
“And he did. Kelly yelled to the chairman, Senator Samuel Jackson, that the demonstration was a fire hazard. He demanded that Jackson immediately adjourn the meeting.
“Jackson polled the delegates. A handful said yes to the adjourning. The overwhelming majority shouted no. But Jackson declared that the motion had carried. He gaveled the session to a close...
“If Pepper had reached the microphone and nominated Henry Wallace before the bosses forced the adjournment of the meeting against the will of the delegates, Wallace would have been nominated vice president. It would have been Wallace who became president in 1945, when Roosevelt died in office. Just five feet more, and there might have been no atomic bombings, no nuclear arms race, and no Cold War.”

A few months ago, there was spirited debate on the Child_Lit discussion board in reaction to the October 7th New York Times article “To Lure Young Readers, Nonfiction Writers Sanitize and Simplify.” This adaptation of the Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick American history series was among the books mentioned in that article.

2014 was a landmark year for nonfiction published for young people. One of my favorite pieces of nonfiction for the year won the Boston Globe-Horn Book award. Another won the National Book Award.

As an adaptation, THE UNTOLD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, YOUNG READERS EDITION, VOLUME 1 1898-1945 is not likely to win any major awards. Nevertheless, it contains more mind-blowing information, insightful analysis, and revisionist theorizing than all of my other 2014 favorites put together. I see America’s history far differently after reading this volume, the first of four. I can’t wait for the other three.

Unfortunately, most of the U.S. history I learned in this UNTOLD HISTORY saddens and/or infuriates me.

If there is a hero in this UNTOLD HISTORY, it is Henry Wallace. Wallace served two terms as vice president to FDR before being dumped by party bosses in favor of the uneducated and malleable machine politician Harry Truman. Despised by those party bosses, Wallace was a visionary who was for civil rights, women’s rights, and worker rights, and against fascism and colonialism.

The most horrible aspect of this history is the authors’ detailed evidence that disproves that dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war, contrary to what we were taught in school. The evidence here shows that Japan was effectively defeated and could have been persuaded to surrender prior to dropping those bombs. It sickens me to read this information.

There are so many other fascinating stories here about how politics and government work that I couldn’t put down the book. My eyes were widening as I read bit after bit of this gripping history.

I’m curious to know whether Alexandra Alter actually read this hard-hitting, thought-provoking book before writing her New York Times article. I doubt that, since the book in no way supports her argument against adaptations.

I know that there are places where grownups prefer that students avoid reading anything that could be construed as questioning the greatness and moral authority of the United States. But for those of us who want to be enlightened and enlighten others, this is a must-have.

Richie Partington, MLIS
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[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Your enjoyment of this book largely depends on how much you buy into Oliver Stone's vision of American history (I'm an avid reader of books relating to the JFK assassination but found Stone's movie totally over the top). I found this volume to be very informative though - broken up by some terrific photos - and came away much more enlightened on various aspects of history from the start of the 20th century through to the dropping of the atomic bombs. Regardless of your opinion of whether the Hiroshima bomb actually saved lives, the Nagasaki does appear to be the most grotesque form of overkill. Looking forward to reading the next volume.

[Kiki · Rating 4 out of 5]

This took my back to my high school history class w/ the most amazing history teacher. Though I knew a good chunk of the history covered in this book thanks to him, there were several events and details that either I have forgotten over time or never actually learned.

[Andrew Hicks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stalin was more of a hero than he is given credit for, this book argues. Sure, he murdered as many as or more people than Hitler, but when World War II was in full swing, Stalin was only too happy to provide the manpower to fight the Germans and the Japanese.

FDR and Churchill pulled the old, "Go ahead, move your guys in; we're on our way, we'll meet you there!" trick on Stalin. And he fell for it too. Moved his guys in, lost a bunch of them, then FDR and Churchill were like, "Hey, we're still on our way, we got held up. Sucks you lost all those guys. We'll send you some food and some weapons to make up for it." And Stalin was like, Cool, and kept fighting, and FDR and Churchill didn't send him shit! Instead, they were like, "Um, we just found out the Nazis are in North Africa, and there's all kinds of crazy resources we want to get our hands on down there, and now seems like the perfect time, so... we'll see ya when we see ya. Laterz!"

Stalin was a patient guy, this book argues. He hung in there, and along with FDR and Churchill, they divided up the entire world on a piece of paper, deciding who would get both territories post-war. But guess what - FDR got sick and died. And instead of grooming a replacement, Roosevelt thought maybe he'd just live forever from his wheelchair, cuz shit, he just kept getting elected, and his face was on the dime, and all that.

FDR almost had this really cool vice president named Henry Wallace for his fourth term. Henry Wallace almost certainly wouldn't go around dropping atomic bombs to show how tough he was, but psych! We got Missouri's own Harry Truman, a corporate agenda-friendly kind of guy whose first three reactions upon finding out he was going to be president were, "Holy crap, I can't be president! I'm not qualified to be president! I don't know anything about being president!" And whose next three reactions were, "We don't need a working relationship with Stalin. We're not giving him territories. What's this about an atomic bomb project?"

The Untold History of the United States contends that World War II had essentially run its course by the time of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hitler was defeated, Mussolini had gone back to his day job as sous chef at the Olive Garden in Rome, and Japan was crippled past the point of effectiveness. Truman dropped the bomb not to win the war but instead as an occasion to: a) Yell the world's loudest, redneckiest "YEEEEEE HAWWWWW!" ever, and, b) Make Stalin crap his utilitarian pants.

Those bombings killed 129,000 people, civilians mostly, and that was a true Holocaust. Not to worry, though - war propaganda and overall racism had already convinced Americans for years that Japanese lives mattered less than those of actual human beings.

So anyway, that's how Volume 1 of the Young Readers Edition of TUHOTUS ends. It begins in 1895, when the Civil War, slavery and Reconstruction were still pretty fresh on the brain of the nation. We find out the Spanish-American War was hugely profitable to certain business interests who also, directly or indirectly, held American political power. We find out foreign policy of the time was pretty well dictated by the banks who had money tied up in American companies.

The template was: Invade the country, in the name of freedom; depose the powers that be, in the name of freedom; set up American-friendly puppet government, in the name of freedom; squash all opponents, in the name of freedom; laugh all the way to the bank.

Revisionist agenda-driven approach or no, TUHOTUS was fascinating to me. I've been out of school for a good 17 years now, so really, this was my first general overview of relatively recent American history in a long time. I was grateful for the "dumbed-down" language and clear presentation of facts suitable for developing-child brains. Some of these things, I knew; some, I'd forgotten about; some, I'd never known before. Put all together, removed from the blind patriotic gloss we're used to, the results were staggering.

What I expected, but was still swept up by, was the narrative spin that the ruling class in this country has done some horrible things, almost always with personal-greed profit motives, and they've either concealed the motives or simply lied about them. The lives of the masses don't matter to them, past the necessity of a customer and labor base.

History, after all, is written by the winners, and there are many of us - myself included - who have never consciously felt the direct effects of oppression or profiteering. We have, however, felt freedom and opportunity, many of us - myself included. On top of it all, we're raised from birth to be grateful and proud that we're here. I know I am.

Oliver Stone is somewhere behind the curtain of this project, which was first a 12-hour documentary series then a huge book then a concise adaptation of that huge book. This textbook edition for middle-grade kids will be released in four volumes - the 1945-1963 edition drops in November. And I'll be reading it cover to cover.

[Akemi G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've already read Vol 2 of this series, and I like this volume just as much. Well-researched and interesting.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick is a work that describes history as it has never been told before. It promises to tell stories that are not told in any textbook other than this one. This book is a must read for people who don’t believe what they are told in school. This book is intended to inform Americans what really happened during certain controversial events. This gives a unique perspective on events and people, ranging from Democratic Party politics to Henry Ford. This book accomplished what it was intended to do and gave its readers a new perspective on events that were either portrayed inaccurately or not even included in certain textbooks.
Oliver Stone, who is an acclaimed actor/screenwriter/producer, also served in the Army for a little over a year, and received many military decorations including the Bronze Star with V device for heroism and two Purple Hearts. In addition to his service, he has also won multiple Academy Awards and Oscars for his writing and direction multiple movies on war including the film “Platoon”. Dr. Kuznick, Oliver Stone’s co-author, is currently a professor of history at American University, who received his Ph.D from Rutgers, and has been active in politics and political movements since the Civil Rights Era. He is also the author of several other books dealing with politics and he is currently involved in the anti-war and nuclear abolition movements.
The tone of this book is relatively dry, but it still is quite interesting and in some sections one can actually feel like they were in the room. Although this book is basically a resuscitation of facts, mixed in with some conspiracy theories, it is quite riveting because it challenges your understanding of history as taught in school. The style this book was written in was essentially meant to be chronological, although there were some exceptions. The book was not really easy to read because many of the ideas or accusations made by the authors were quite confusing. My favourite part of the book was Chapter 29,”The Man Who Would Be President”, and I liked this section of the book because it was talking about something that is quite interesting to me. I thought that it was a good idea for this section to quote newspaper articles from the time period and to include some background on the author of the passage. My least favourite aspect of the book was the fact that they exaggerated a lot. This was annoying because I wanted to read a book with facts, not a book that had some over-exaggerated numbers. If I could change something about this book I would have made it so it talked more about how foreign events affected the U.S. and not as much about how the U.S. affected foreign events. To do this they would have been able to better explain some outside issues that caused issues in the United States. In this book there are many photographs and illustrations throughout it. These photographs really didn’t affect the plot in any major way, although they were in some cases able to better get the point across, or were helpful to understanding what point the author was making.
While this book was not spectacular it also wasn’t bad. I would recommend this book, but not for everyone. This book should really only be for academics and people who don’t believe what they were taught in school. This book is a good read for hard core readers, but if you are reading for fun it really is probably not for you. To better understand this book it would be helpful if you had at least a rudimentary knowledge of history, politics and military science. I would not recommend this book to people who really have no knowledge of history because this book delves deeper into the world of history, and without an understanding, one would basically be reading a series of historical analysis of events that seem to have no connection to one another.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s all the fault of the Capitalists! The common story of American History is biased and told from the viewpoint of the American Government which protects itself from damaging press by determining what version of the story is told and how much information the public receives. Recently, previously sealed documents have come to light which changes the perspective on American History (as we know it). Movie director and historian Oliver Stone presents this version of the 1st half of the 20th Century.

Using phrases like hatched plans, orchestrated, and extorted, we are certainly getting the untold story, but without acknowledgement of the other side, it reads like propaganda. Billed as a “crucial counterpoint to America’s textbooks” it’s not balanced. 8 pages of source material, 6 of them are internet sources. None of the sources are attributed to their reference in the text, instead the reader is referred to the adult version of the text. I can see why it is considered controversial.