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A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism
“Thought-provoking—a must read for [everyone] seeking a firm grasp of accurate American history." —Kirkus (starred review)
Brilliant, readable, and raw . Maj. (ret.) Danny Sjursen, who served combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at West Point, delivers a true epic and the perfect companion to Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States .
Sjursen shifts the lens and challenges readers to think critically and to apply common sense to their understanding of our nation's past—and present—so we can view history as never before.
A True History of the United States was inspired by a course that Sjursen taught to cadets at West Point, his alma mater. With chapter titles such as "Patriots or Insurgents?" and "The Decade That Roared and Wept", A True History is accurate with respect to the facts and intellectually honest in its presentation and analysis.
"Sjursen exposes the dominant historical narrative as at best myth, and at times a lie . . . He brings out from the shadows those who struggled, often at the cost of their own lives, for equality and justice. Their stories, so often ignored or trivialized, give us examples of who we should emulate and who we must become." —Chris Hedges, author of Empire of Illusion and The Farewell Tour
Brilliant, readable, and raw . Maj. (ret.) Danny Sjursen, who served combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at West Point, delivers a true epic and the perfect companion to Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States .
Sjursen shifts the lens and challenges readers to think critically and to apply common sense to their understanding of our nation's past—and present—so we can view history as never before.
A True History of the United States was inspired by a course that Sjursen taught to cadets at West Point, his alma mater. With chapter titles such as "Patriots or Insurgents?" and "The Decade That Roared and Wept", A True History is accurate with respect to the facts and intellectually honest in its presentation and analysis.
"Sjursen exposes the dominant historical narrative as at best myth, and at times a lie . . . He brings out from the shadows those who struggled, often at the cost of their own lives, for equality and justice. Their stories, so often ignored or trivialized, give us examples of who we should emulate and who we must become." —Chris Hedges, author of Empire of Illusion and The Farewell Tour
688 pages, Paperback
Published June 1, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 101 reviews
June 3, 2021
An eye opening, thought provoking and well written history of the United States that was an excellent read. It led to much reading and discussion within my family and I’m sure it’s a book I will refer to often.
June 16, 2021
I was attracted to this book because of the title. When I started reading I wasn't sure what to expect because I saw the author taught history at West Point. But as I got into it, I was absolutely hooked -- it's a long read but well-worth it and I could not put it down. Sjursen shines a fresh light on the history of the United States and our imperialist motives through waging war since the beginning of our history. One factor that makes this book so incredible is that he himself is a retired Army Major and combat veteran. His perspective on all of the wars i provided me with new insights and perspectives that were different from how I understood them.. He also provides a balanced portrait (the good and bad) of each of our presidents regardless of political party. Sjursen makes a very compelling case on why the country has become more conservative and how these seeds were planted and/or cultivated by actions taken or not taken by supposedly "leftist democratic" presidents.
This book is meticulously researched and is definitely one I will keep on my bookshelf along with other books that give me a more complete sense of history beyond the one I was taught in school.
I highly recommend this book!
This book is meticulously researched and is definitely one I will keep on my bookshelf along with other books that give me a more complete sense of history beyond the one I was taught in school.
I highly recommend this book!
July 3, 2021
Incredibly compelling history of the US, organized into short, easy digestible chronological chapters.
In the words of Faulkner, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." This book does a great job at showing how the same themes repeat over and over again in US history -- right up to the present day. "You have to know the past to understand the present." -- Carl Sagan.
In the words of Faulkner, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." This book does a great job at showing how the same themes repeat over and over again in US history -- right up to the present day. "You have to know the past to understand the present." -- Carl Sagan.
November 9, 2021
A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism Daniel A Sjursen title pretty much sums up this narative. Daniel shoot the dude pulls absolutely no punches, highly critical of all Presidents which is where the focus of this history spans out from, imagine his research team dived into obscure archives, articles and that sort of information. Geeze Louise its massive, complicated but highly absorbing, a must if your American, and even after this history this New Zealander, Kiwi, Maori boy, he still likes Americans, like a lot of us here. But man you got to sort your house out, 1 example Health care, being bankrupted and the only developed country on the planet that doesn't have free health care for all its citizens thats crazy, guess it won't stop because someone makes way to much money, and the rest of the Joes just put up with it. probably going to re-write this sounds way preachy. Anyway got to get back work.
July 21, 2021
Finally, a military historian who respects pacifists. Worth it for that alone.
December 30, 2021
Questions: What was Plantation Society to do with those white indentured servants who survived and matriculated? Were our founding fathers also early drug dealers (growing tobacco)? Massachusetts starts American exceptionalism with their kooky City on a Hill schtick. Almost four decades before the Salem witch trials, Ann Higgins was executed as a witch for complaining her carpenters had overcharged her. Think of those later witch trials as “Islamic State on the Atlantic”. If you preached religious toleration back then, as Roger Williams did, you got a one-way ticket out of town. Anne Hutchinson got banished too. Natives asked Massachusetts Puritans: “Should not Christians have more mercy and compassion?” William Bradford wrote of his involvement in the Mystic Massacre: “It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire …and horrible was the stink …but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave praise thereof to God.” In the Jumonville Affair, Washington commits war crimes when his forces open fire on a diplomatic mission and kill a prisoner. Washington is forced to surrender. Pontiac’s Rebellion was started because of white land fever. The French had ceded the Ohio Valley to the Brits without native permission. Natives could no longer play the white invaders off each other, now that the Brits were the only game left in town. Time would show that the natives, not the French, were the real losers of the Seven Year’s War.
We were all taught in school that taxes were the big reason for the Revolutionary War, but “the colonists paid far lower taxes than metropolitan Britain.” The 1765 Sugar tax lowered taxes on molasses. After the Revolutionary War, state taxation “was on average two to three times higher than in the colonial era. Only one in three colonists were hard-core patriots. Off-duty British soldiers entered the colonist’s workforce and took the jobs from other colonists adding to tension. Tarring and feathering would today be called terrorism; it left physical scars after the incredible pain. In 1775, Lord Dunmore threated to free slaves in Virginia, which drove slavers to join the Revolution for the right to continue to deny freedom and liberty to fellow humans. Even Ben Franklin owned five slaves and allowed ads in his papers about slave auctions and runaway slaves. Dunmore raises 800-1000 black volunteers to fight the patriots.
Bunker Hill was the bloodiest day of the war and it also happened before war was declared. The Continental Congress was dozens of men signing an act of treason. Ho Chi Minh quotes directly from the Declaration of Independence when Vietnam declares independence from France in 1945. The US multiple times drove Ho away. Continually spurning him sure ended well for the US. Blacks were actually more likely to have fought in the Revolution than whites. And they fought on the British side. There’s an article about blacks called, “when Freedom wore a Red Coat.” “The Revolution was also the greatest slave rebellion in American history.” To local blacks, the Patriots were a sad and whiney lot; here they were endlessly carping on about how British taxes were “enslavement” and slavery” while next to them were their actual slaves saying, “We can hear what you are saying, you know.”
“Lay waste all the [native] settlements around …that the country may not be merely overrun but destroyed. Run on with the war whoop and fixed bayonet.” - George Washington’s official orders to General John Sullivan. Enlistees were promised Indian land to get them to sign up. Historian Page Smith wrote that Washington’s American campaign that he ordered in western New York was “the most ruthless application of scorched-earth policy in US history”. Washington called the destruction of the Iroquois, “the main military effort of 1779.” Gee, and I thought George was supposed to be concentrating on fighting the Brits during the war and not boldly securing future wealth, silly me. One third of the army was dedicated to this side task. In the words of an Onondaga chief, “They [Sullivan’s troops] put to death all the women and children, excepting some of the women, whom they carried away for the use of their soldiers and were afterwards put to death in a more shameful manner.” This is how the future US doubles in size from 1763 to 1783; the natives tell you don’t take it, the Brits write a Royal Proclamation telling you not to take it, and then you take it anyway because you think you deserve it. The Pennsylvanian Line mutinies, and Washington gets them their back pay. The New Jersey Line mutinies and because there are fewer mutineers, Washington says, execute them. At this point, one in four soldiers were in revolt. Let’s face it, even George’s teeth were revolting. The rebels win by not losing, and through critical help from the French. Good luck trying to successfully “pacify a rebellious population with military force”.
With the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the US doubles in size and 1785 Northwest Ordinance pisses off the states thinking they’d get some of that new land with their states expanding westward. Natives thought, you’re crazy, that beautiful land is not yours, yet you profligate white nations are passing it around like a case of syphilis. The Northwest Ordinance shows the Articles of Confederation aren’t enough, you’ll need a centralized government and a Constitution if you want to violently force the surrounding natives to give up everything and respect a piece of paper signed only by elite racists in Europe. “The ordinance doomed the native peoples inhabiting this fertile land to either conquest and subservience or expulsion.” Study Shay’s Rebellion. It hit the elites and GW hard. Broadway lovers adore Hamilton because of the revisionist play; real Hamilton said in making the Constitution, they had to rein in “an excess of democracy.” He also said, [The masses] “seldom judge right. Therefore, give to the first class a distinct permanent share of government.” Joseph Ellis said back then the average person travelled no further than 26 miles from their birthplace in their lifetime. Remember the bit in the Constitution with slave’s becoming 3/5 of a human being? Historian Woody Holton says, “in this instance, slave’s interests would have been better served if they had not been considered persons at all.” Think of entire Constitution as a compromise, but since childhood we’ve been taught federalist history, not anti-federalist history. Patrick Henry was one of the anti-federalist leaders. Don’t forget, it was the anti-federalists who demanded the Bill of Rights. The Constitution gave you no rights until these unsung anti-federalist heroes forced the federalists to adopt the Bill of Rights. For those who care about the right of free speech or the right to bear arms, stop venerating first the Federalists and study anti-federalism (I’m reading Storing).
The Constitution created a central government with a standing army to suppress not safeguard liberty (to stop any future Shay’s Rebellions, or slave rebellions and to get settler-colonial out west). The Constitution meant “doom for the native tribes.” From 1789 to 1795 the US Army increased 5x. The Cowboy vs Indian thing was a myth and makes them sound equal; it was really the well-financed US Army vs Indians. Indian resistance had “stymied land sales” and now the Army was needed to get settler-colonial. Actual 1790 popular US military toast: “Civilization or death to all American savages.” Taxpayers were paying for the fighting to boldly take native land. Jefferson wanted a small government and tried to represent the small farmers of the South and the West. Adams had no slaves. The actual text of the Sedition Act is chilling.
Thomas Jefferson was, Daniel says, “perhaps the most expansion-minded president in American history.” At the same time there is this: Mr. Small Government Jefferson sends envoys to buy New Orleans and ends up strongly expanding federal power by buying the Louisiana Purchase.
When Jefferson was nailing Sally Hemmings, he knew he was banging his wife’s sister. And he knew Sally was the “love” child of his own father and another one of his slaves. “Sally and Martha sharing a father looked alike”. That’s a set up too racy for the Young and the Restless. It sure is bizarre to combine the Jefferson we were taught in school with the “slave owner who signed the death warrant of many thousands of Indians and an entire way of life.” The cotton gin made cotton production explode in the South. The South was freaked out about stories of the Haitian Revolution influencing their slaves. “A free black man in New York or Boston tended to have more rights in 1790 than in 1808 – at the end of Jefferson’s second term.”
The War of 1812 is one of only five wars that the US has declared. It was pretty much only about honor and we invaded Canada. During it, there was an actual “Free Canada” movement. I’ll bet its motto was “Free Canada, Eh?” Listen to the King of Expansion Jefferson talk: “The acquisition of Canada, this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching.” Six hundred blacks run away to become Royal Marines during 1812. We were taught the burning of the White House, but not that it was payback for burning down the Canadian Capitol at York. The biggest losers of 1812 were the natives. The Federalists lost and the Republicans hit the big time. The most popular Presidential name for a town or county is Madison.
Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams hated Jackson’s Indian Removal (today called ethnic cleansing). Strangely Jackson did one thing right: he paid off the Federal Debt. The US then invades and conquers half of Mexico. Mexico had become independent in 1821. Then the Mexican Republic committed an unforgivable sin: they dared outlaw slavery in 1829. Anglo settlers had slaves; so conflict was in the air. White male Americans prattled on about the need for freedom and liberty while giving none to women, blacks or natives. Those men trapped in the Alamo were pro-slavery, so why were we taught to call them heroes? The only time we should remember the Alamo, is when we’re at the airport and Hertz, Avis and National are all booked. Tyler annexing Texas in 1845 was an act of war. Luckily for the US, Mexico allowed it to happen. Manifest Destiny was a free ticket for imperialism. With white Canada, Polk compromises and agrees to a new boundary. With colored Mexico, Polk instead fights. Mexico never invaded Texas; Texas was in Mexico then. The Mexican war desertion rate was two times the desertion rate for the Vietnam War. Many of those opposed to taking all of Mexico, weren’t anti-imperialist but merely didn’t want more brown people in their white nation. Native Americans had been considered full citizens in Mexico, but that wouldn’t fly in the racist US. Our national motto should be ‘Democracy through undemocratic means since 1776’.
At the beginning of the Civil War, the North’s forces were fighting Indians, while the South’s forces were controlling slaves. Soldiers could choose either violently stealing land, or protecting the theft of black bodies. It was morally like choosing or either be part of a sexual enslavement ring, or an enforcer for the Mafia. 180,000 black soldiers served in the Union Army. 6% of Northern males and 18% of Southern males died in the Civil War. President Andrew Johnson said of Fredrick Douglas, “He’s just like any other nigger, and he would sooner cut a white man’s throat than not.” The North was then still extremely racist, so, careful wanting to make the South be more like the North. As the Cincinnati Enquirer explained at the time, “Slavery is dead, the negro is not, there is the misfortune.” Cowboys didn’t look like the guys in Marlboro ads, they were first Spanish, then Mexican. One in four cowboys were black; good luck being taught any of that. And ranching isn’t four rugged libertarians eating beans around a campfire, ranching is corporate.
Then comes the genocide of the California Indians, “by 1860 only 30,000 of the 150,000 California Indians remained alive.” For what crime did the Native Americans lose their lives and lands? Today the four poorest US counties are all Indian Reservations. New Mexico was majority Spanish until the twentieth century. One of the things leading to the Progressive Era was work related: 35,000 deaths on the job annually (1880 to 1900) and in 1900, there were 1,700,000 children in the US workforce. In 1877, the Republican Party abandons helping blacks. Big money enters politics with McKinley (the Republicans raise $7,000,000 against the Democrats’ $300,000). Progressive Democrats then wouldn’t even challenge the Klan. Teddy Roosevelt once said, “the greatest existing cause of lynching is the perpetuation, especially by black men, of the hideous crime of rape.” Nice deflection from centuries of white men freely raping black enslaved women.
One of the big reasons for the Revolutionary War was the cry “no taxation without representation.” Does any liberal or conservative today notice the people of Puerto Rico, Guam and Samoa still calling on us for their representation? No, that level of listening belongs only to progressives. The US invaded Cuba in the Spanish-American War, because elites couldn’t have an independent black republic on their southern shores. After calling Cubans “as ignorant as children” General Wood admitted, “there is of course little or no independence left Cuba under [the Platt Amendment]. Case solved through odious patronizing paternalism, a US favorite. Teddy writes in 1897, that he sadly felt, “a good deal disheartened at the queer lack of imperial instinct our people show.” Ah, so sad.
The US invades the Philippines where an officer says, “Where these sassy niggers used to greet us daily with a pleasant smile …they now pass by with menacing looks.” Oh, poor baby. Maybe stop invading? One black soldier there watching the blatant racism against Asians wrote, “We are daily making permanent enemies.” As a Philadelphia paper wrote, “It is not civilized warfare, but we are not dealing with a civilized race.” McKinley said that God told him to seize the Philippines. Bush Jr said that God told him to end the tyranny in Iraq. Who knew, God talks first to war criminals? Steven Kinzer wrote, “Far more Filipinos were killed or died as a result of mistreatment [over four years] than in three and a half centuries of Spanish rule.” “An American decree made it a crime for any Filipino to advocate independence.” General Funston said anyone who was anti-imperialist “should be dragged out of their homes and lynched.” Mark Twain actually volunteered to Funston to be the first man. The Filipinos being mowed down were fighting for the same reasons we rebels (as in Haiti and later on even Vietnam) had fought for during the Revolutionary War.
The US fought in WWI to secure a ten billion dollars loan to the Allies. The US lied, the Lusitania was in fact carrying weapons (1,248 cases of three-inch shells and 4,927 boxes of rifle cartridges). Why is the Espionage Act from then still on the books? War time propaganda was herd psychology and “conscription of thought” (John Dewey’s term). During WWI, everyone had been deprived “the freedom of their tongue”, “not one could utter dissent.” German Measles became Liberty Measles. The Washington Post said it was “healthful and wholesome awakening” when a German American was lynched in Chicago.
WWI sets back progressives by a generation (said Jane Addams). In 1900, 90% of blacks lived in the South. FDR used to say the New Deal was the idea that man is his brother’s keeper. During the New Deal, 75% of Blacks couldn’t vote. Neither party would champion their rights since 1877. FDR had to appease his very-powerful Southerners in the party who chaired the key committees. FDR knew if he said a word, the southern Democrats “will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing.” It was they who had demanded in return for support that blacks not be part of the New Deal. Because of this restriction, the New Deal became a sort of Swedish Apartheid (Ira Katznelson). Today’s Republican Party is traced back to the non-racial backlash against the New Deal. The New Deal had provided security, but the sociopathic-by-nature business sector wants worker insecurity. The New Deal increased the power of the government. The New Deal was acting (if only slightly) responsive to the people (Chomsky). These are the crimes of government that must be stopped by today’s Republicans.
On the “sneak” attack of Pearl Harbor: Stimson in late November 1941 wrote in his diary, that FDR had “said at a meeting that Japan was going to launch an attack against the United States without warning.” The Japanese had only eighteen months of oil reserves and calculated two years of naval superiority left in order to sink the US Navy and better control China. Sixty million die in WWII, only 400,000 of which are American. The death rate for a US soldier was 1/10 that of the Civil War. One Russian said, “We’ve lost millions of people and they [Americans] want us to crawl on our knees because they send us Spam.” The average GI was age 26 and had one year of high school under his belt. When married men got exempted from the first draft, 40% of 21-year-olds got married in six weeks. Such patriotism. General LeMay told McNamara he knew if he lost the war, he’d be tried for war crimes. A study had shown that only 1/3 of British bombers made it within five miles of their target. This “area bombing” was “premeditated murder from the skies”. But soon the Americans were playing catchup in the ‘let’s bomb civilians w/o moral qualms’ game. If you were a sadistic racist in WWII, you wanted to be fighting in the Pacific. Showing off your collection of German and Italian ears would be considered bad form, while it was common for them to collect ears, teeth and skulls of the Japanese. FDR was thoughtfully sent a Japanese bone letter opener. If you were captured in Europe, you had a 99% survival rate. If you were captured by the Japanese, you had a 66% survival rate and a 90% chance of getting beaten, but you’d be able to whistle the “Bridge over the River Kwai” theme. WWII was fighting violent Nazi racism abroad while ignoring violent racism at home.
Goodreads won't allow the rest of this book review on here because it's too long and so the last eight paragraphs are in the comment section. Cheers.
We were all taught in school that taxes were the big reason for the Revolutionary War, but “the colonists paid far lower taxes than metropolitan Britain.” The 1765 Sugar tax lowered taxes on molasses. After the Revolutionary War, state taxation “was on average two to three times higher than in the colonial era. Only one in three colonists were hard-core patriots. Off-duty British soldiers entered the colonist’s workforce and took the jobs from other colonists adding to tension. Tarring and feathering would today be called terrorism; it left physical scars after the incredible pain. In 1775, Lord Dunmore threated to free slaves in Virginia, which drove slavers to join the Revolution for the right to continue to deny freedom and liberty to fellow humans. Even Ben Franklin owned five slaves and allowed ads in his papers about slave auctions and runaway slaves. Dunmore raises 800-1000 black volunteers to fight the patriots.
Bunker Hill was the bloodiest day of the war and it also happened before war was declared. The Continental Congress was dozens of men signing an act of treason. Ho Chi Minh quotes directly from the Declaration of Independence when Vietnam declares independence from France in 1945. The US multiple times drove Ho away. Continually spurning him sure ended well for the US. Blacks were actually more likely to have fought in the Revolution than whites. And they fought on the British side. There’s an article about blacks called, “when Freedom wore a Red Coat.” “The Revolution was also the greatest slave rebellion in American history.” To local blacks, the Patriots were a sad and whiney lot; here they were endlessly carping on about how British taxes were “enslavement” and slavery” while next to them were their actual slaves saying, “We can hear what you are saying, you know.”
“Lay waste all the [native] settlements around …that the country may not be merely overrun but destroyed. Run on with the war whoop and fixed bayonet.” - George Washington’s official orders to General John Sullivan. Enlistees were promised Indian land to get them to sign up. Historian Page Smith wrote that Washington’s American campaign that he ordered in western New York was “the most ruthless application of scorched-earth policy in US history”. Washington called the destruction of the Iroquois, “the main military effort of 1779.” Gee, and I thought George was supposed to be concentrating on fighting the Brits during the war and not boldly securing future wealth, silly me. One third of the army was dedicated to this side task. In the words of an Onondaga chief, “They [Sullivan’s troops] put to death all the women and children, excepting some of the women, whom they carried away for the use of their soldiers and were afterwards put to death in a more shameful manner.” This is how the future US doubles in size from 1763 to 1783; the natives tell you don’t take it, the Brits write a Royal Proclamation telling you not to take it, and then you take it anyway because you think you deserve it. The Pennsylvanian Line mutinies, and Washington gets them their back pay. The New Jersey Line mutinies and because there are fewer mutineers, Washington says, execute them. At this point, one in four soldiers were in revolt. Let’s face it, even George’s teeth were revolting. The rebels win by not losing, and through critical help from the French. Good luck trying to successfully “pacify a rebellious population with military force”.
With the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the US doubles in size and 1785 Northwest Ordinance pisses off the states thinking they’d get some of that new land with their states expanding westward. Natives thought, you’re crazy, that beautiful land is not yours, yet you profligate white nations are passing it around like a case of syphilis. The Northwest Ordinance shows the Articles of Confederation aren’t enough, you’ll need a centralized government and a Constitution if you want to violently force the surrounding natives to give up everything and respect a piece of paper signed only by elite racists in Europe. “The ordinance doomed the native peoples inhabiting this fertile land to either conquest and subservience or expulsion.” Study Shay’s Rebellion. It hit the elites and GW hard. Broadway lovers adore Hamilton because of the revisionist play; real Hamilton said in making the Constitution, they had to rein in “an excess of democracy.” He also said, [The masses] “seldom judge right. Therefore, give to the first class a distinct permanent share of government.” Joseph Ellis said back then the average person travelled no further than 26 miles from their birthplace in their lifetime. Remember the bit in the Constitution with slave’s becoming 3/5 of a human being? Historian Woody Holton says, “in this instance, slave’s interests would have been better served if they had not been considered persons at all.” Think of entire Constitution as a compromise, but since childhood we’ve been taught federalist history, not anti-federalist history. Patrick Henry was one of the anti-federalist leaders. Don’t forget, it was the anti-federalists who demanded the Bill of Rights. The Constitution gave you no rights until these unsung anti-federalist heroes forced the federalists to adopt the Bill of Rights. For those who care about the right of free speech or the right to bear arms, stop venerating first the Federalists and study anti-federalism (I’m reading Storing).
The Constitution created a central government with a standing army to suppress not safeguard liberty (to stop any future Shay’s Rebellions, or slave rebellions and to get settler-colonial out west). The Constitution meant “doom for the native tribes.” From 1789 to 1795 the US Army increased 5x. The Cowboy vs Indian thing was a myth and makes them sound equal; it was really the well-financed US Army vs Indians. Indian resistance had “stymied land sales” and now the Army was needed to get settler-colonial. Actual 1790 popular US military toast: “Civilization or death to all American savages.” Taxpayers were paying for the fighting to boldly take native land. Jefferson wanted a small government and tried to represent the small farmers of the South and the West. Adams had no slaves. The actual text of the Sedition Act is chilling.
Thomas Jefferson was, Daniel says, “perhaps the most expansion-minded president in American history.” At the same time there is this: Mr. Small Government Jefferson sends envoys to buy New Orleans and ends up strongly expanding federal power by buying the Louisiana Purchase.
When Jefferson was nailing Sally Hemmings, he knew he was banging his wife’s sister. And he knew Sally was the “love” child of his own father and another one of his slaves. “Sally and Martha sharing a father looked alike”. That’s a set up too racy for the Young and the Restless. It sure is bizarre to combine the Jefferson we were taught in school with the “slave owner who signed the death warrant of many thousands of Indians and an entire way of life.” The cotton gin made cotton production explode in the South. The South was freaked out about stories of the Haitian Revolution influencing their slaves. “A free black man in New York or Boston tended to have more rights in 1790 than in 1808 – at the end of Jefferson’s second term.”
The War of 1812 is one of only five wars that the US has declared. It was pretty much only about honor and we invaded Canada. During it, there was an actual “Free Canada” movement. I’ll bet its motto was “Free Canada, Eh?” Listen to the King of Expansion Jefferson talk: “The acquisition of Canada, this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching.” Six hundred blacks run away to become Royal Marines during 1812. We were taught the burning of the White House, but not that it was payback for burning down the Canadian Capitol at York. The biggest losers of 1812 were the natives. The Federalists lost and the Republicans hit the big time. The most popular Presidential name for a town or county is Madison.
Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams hated Jackson’s Indian Removal (today called ethnic cleansing). Strangely Jackson did one thing right: he paid off the Federal Debt. The US then invades and conquers half of Mexico. Mexico had become independent in 1821. Then the Mexican Republic committed an unforgivable sin: they dared outlaw slavery in 1829. Anglo settlers had slaves; so conflict was in the air. White male Americans prattled on about the need for freedom and liberty while giving none to women, blacks or natives. Those men trapped in the Alamo were pro-slavery, so why were we taught to call them heroes? The only time we should remember the Alamo, is when we’re at the airport and Hertz, Avis and National are all booked. Tyler annexing Texas in 1845 was an act of war. Luckily for the US, Mexico allowed it to happen. Manifest Destiny was a free ticket for imperialism. With white Canada, Polk compromises and agrees to a new boundary. With colored Mexico, Polk instead fights. Mexico never invaded Texas; Texas was in Mexico then. The Mexican war desertion rate was two times the desertion rate for the Vietnam War. Many of those opposed to taking all of Mexico, weren’t anti-imperialist but merely didn’t want more brown people in their white nation. Native Americans had been considered full citizens in Mexico, but that wouldn’t fly in the racist US. Our national motto should be ‘Democracy through undemocratic means since 1776’.
At the beginning of the Civil War, the North’s forces were fighting Indians, while the South’s forces were controlling slaves. Soldiers could choose either violently stealing land, or protecting the theft of black bodies. It was morally like choosing or either be part of a sexual enslavement ring, or an enforcer for the Mafia. 180,000 black soldiers served in the Union Army. 6% of Northern males and 18% of Southern males died in the Civil War. President Andrew Johnson said of Fredrick Douglas, “He’s just like any other nigger, and he would sooner cut a white man’s throat than not.” The North was then still extremely racist, so, careful wanting to make the South be more like the North. As the Cincinnati Enquirer explained at the time, “Slavery is dead, the negro is not, there is the misfortune.” Cowboys didn’t look like the guys in Marlboro ads, they were first Spanish, then Mexican. One in four cowboys were black; good luck being taught any of that. And ranching isn’t four rugged libertarians eating beans around a campfire, ranching is corporate.
Then comes the genocide of the California Indians, “by 1860 only 30,000 of the 150,000 California Indians remained alive.” For what crime did the Native Americans lose their lives and lands? Today the four poorest US counties are all Indian Reservations. New Mexico was majority Spanish until the twentieth century. One of the things leading to the Progressive Era was work related: 35,000 deaths on the job annually (1880 to 1900) and in 1900, there were 1,700,000 children in the US workforce. In 1877, the Republican Party abandons helping blacks. Big money enters politics with McKinley (the Republicans raise $7,000,000 against the Democrats’ $300,000). Progressive Democrats then wouldn’t even challenge the Klan. Teddy Roosevelt once said, “the greatest existing cause of lynching is the perpetuation, especially by black men, of the hideous crime of rape.” Nice deflection from centuries of white men freely raping black enslaved women.
One of the big reasons for the Revolutionary War was the cry “no taxation without representation.” Does any liberal or conservative today notice the people of Puerto Rico, Guam and Samoa still calling on us for their representation? No, that level of listening belongs only to progressives. The US invaded Cuba in the Spanish-American War, because elites couldn’t have an independent black republic on their southern shores. After calling Cubans “as ignorant as children” General Wood admitted, “there is of course little or no independence left Cuba under [the Platt Amendment]. Case solved through odious patronizing paternalism, a US favorite. Teddy writes in 1897, that he sadly felt, “a good deal disheartened at the queer lack of imperial instinct our people show.” Ah, so sad.
The US invades the Philippines where an officer says, “Where these sassy niggers used to greet us daily with a pleasant smile …they now pass by with menacing looks.” Oh, poor baby. Maybe stop invading? One black soldier there watching the blatant racism against Asians wrote, “We are daily making permanent enemies.” As a Philadelphia paper wrote, “It is not civilized warfare, but we are not dealing with a civilized race.” McKinley said that God told him to seize the Philippines. Bush Jr said that God told him to end the tyranny in Iraq. Who knew, God talks first to war criminals? Steven Kinzer wrote, “Far more Filipinos were killed or died as a result of mistreatment [over four years] than in three and a half centuries of Spanish rule.” “An American decree made it a crime for any Filipino to advocate independence.” General Funston said anyone who was anti-imperialist “should be dragged out of their homes and lynched.” Mark Twain actually volunteered to Funston to be the first man. The Filipinos being mowed down were fighting for the same reasons we rebels (as in Haiti and later on even Vietnam) had fought for during the Revolutionary War.
The US fought in WWI to secure a ten billion dollars loan to the Allies. The US lied, the Lusitania was in fact carrying weapons (1,248 cases of three-inch shells and 4,927 boxes of rifle cartridges). Why is the Espionage Act from then still on the books? War time propaganda was herd psychology and “conscription of thought” (John Dewey’s term). During WWI, everyone had been deprived “the freedom of their tongue”, “not one could utter dissent.” German Measles became Liberty Measles. The Washington Post said it was “healthful and wholesome awakening” when a German American was lynched in Chicago.
WWI sets back progressives by a generation (said Jane Addams). In 1900, 90% of blacks lived in the South. FDR used to say the New Deal was the idea that man is his brother’s keeper. During the New Deal, 75% of Blacks couldn’t vote. Neither party would champion their rights since 1877. FDR had to appease his very-powerful Southerners in the party who chaired the key committees. FDR knew if he said a word, the southern Democrats “will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing.” It was they who had demanded in return for support that blacks not be part of the New Deal. Because of this restriction, the New Deal became a sort of Swedish Apartheid (Ira Katznelson). Today’s Republican Party is traced back to the non-racial backlash against the New Deal. The New Deal had provided security, but the sociopathic-by-nature business sector wants worker insecurity. The New Deal increased the power of the government. The New Deal was acting (if only slightly) responsive to the people (Chomsky). These are the crimes of government that must be stopped by today’s Republicans.
On the “sneak” attack of Pearl Harbor: Stimson in late November 1941 wrote in his diary, that FDR had “said at a meeting that Japan was going to launch an attack against the United States without warning.” The Japanese had only eighteen months of oil reserves and calculated two years of naval superiority left in order to sink the US Navy and better control China. Sixty million die in WWII, only 400,000 of which are American. The death rate for a US soldier was 1/10 that of the Civil War. One Russian said, “We’ve lost millions of people and they [Americans] want us to crawl on our knees because they send us Spam.” The average GI was age 26 and had one year of high school under his belt. When married men got exempted from the first draft, 40% of 21-year-olds got married in six weeks. Such patriotism. General LeMay told McNamara he knew if he lost the war, he’d be tried for war crimes. A study had shown that only 1/3 of British bombers made it within five miles of their target. This “area bombing” was “premeditated murder from the skies”. But soon the Americans were playing catchup in the ‘let’s bomb civilians w/o moral qualms’ game. If you were a sadistic racist in WWII, you wanted to be fighting in the Pacific. Showing off your collection of German and Italian ears would be considered bad form, while it was common for them to collect ears, teeth and skulls of the Japanese. FDR was thoughtfully sent a Japanese bone letter opener. If you were captured in Europe, you had a 99% survival rate. If you were captured by the Japanese, you had a 66% survival rate and a 90% chance of getting beaten, but you’d be able to whistle the “Bridge over the River Kwai” theme. WWII was fighting violent Nazi racism abroad while ignoring violent racism at home.
Goodreads won't allow the rest of this book review on here because it's too long and so the last eight paragraphs are in the comment section. Cheers.
May 31, 2021
CYNICAL
This is the most cynical history of anything that I've ever read in over seventy years. After finishing this book, it makes me wonder if he was part of the group that attacked the Capitol. There is not one thing in the history of the US that was done for a good reason. The Revolutionary War was fought by a minority of Americans and mostly the revolutionaries were slave owners. We stole most of the western American states from the Mexicans. We are just as bad as other colonial empires in the Phillipines, Guam, Cuba, Puerto Rico, etc. Every war in Asia (even WW2) were racist based. Etc
Wah wah wah. If America is so bad why did you join the US military, you were a volunteer, right. Does that make you the dupe of the people you complain about? I always worry about people who say they have the Truth, like bible thumpers or Bolshevics or Nazis. As a cynic myself, look at the picture he has near the end of the book of an American in Afghanistan. Look at the cars in the parking on our right and the group of construction cranes in the background that looks like the Emirates.
Take his complaint that we stole one half of Mexico (more like one-third) as the aftermath of the 1848 War. But he doesn't mention that the land was stolen from the Spanish by the Mexicans, and stolen from the Indigenous People and the Aztecs by the Spanish. Mexico existed for sixteen years when we fought the war. We also stole the Philipines, Guam, Puerto Rico, etc from Spain during the 1898 war. Who did the Spanish steal the land from. (Should we give back to Germany the land we helped steal after WW1 and WW2.)
Everything that America doesn't is bad and related to making the rich even richer and damn the poor. What he doesn't do is make any suggestions as to what could be done different. He taught at West Point, but doesn't mention that means he was part of the Military-Industrial Complex. He reminds me of German apologists after 1945 and Communists after 1989: those weren't us, those were the bad guys, we wouldn't do that.
In an age where for the last twenty years the Republicans under McConnell/Gingrich have treated the Congress as a law blocking legislature, it's hard to find his arguments hold water. The Republicans who are the Party of No, come in for little complaint; yes they're biased and never heard of the honorable opposition, but that's fine.
So, Daniel, do a study of other countries and find somewhere else to live, maybe Denmark which accommodated the Nazis during WW2 (though they helped the Danish Jews escape to Sweden) and with Norway were the last place to throw out the Germans, AFTER the war was over.
This is the most cynical history of anything that I've ever read in over seventy years. After finishing this book, it makes me wonder if he was part of the group that attacked the Capitol. There is not one thing in the history of the US that was done for a good reason. The Revolutionary War was fought by a minority of Americans and mostly the revolutionaries were slave owners. We stole most of the western American states from the Mexicans. We are just as bad as other colonial empires in the Phillipines, Guam, Cuba, Puerto Rico, etc. Every war in Asia (even WW2) were racist based. Etc
Wah wah wah. If America is so bad why did you join the US military, you were a volunteer, right. Does that make you the dupe of the people you complain about? I always worry about people who say they have the Truth, like bible thumpers or Bolshevics or Nazis. As a cynic myself, look at the picture he has near the end of the book of an American in Afghanistan. Look at the cars in the parking on our right and the group of construction cranes in the background that looks like the Emirates.
Take his complaint that we stole one half of Mexico (more like one-third) as the aftermath of the 1848 War. But he doesn't mention that the land was stolen from the Spanish by the Mexicans, and stolen from the Indigenous People and the Aztecs by the Spanish. Mexico existed for sixteen years when we fought the war. We also stole the Philipines, Guam, Puerto Rico, etc from Spain during the 1898 war. Who did the Spanish steal the land from. (Should we give back to Germany the land we helped steal after WW1 and WW2.)
Everything that America doesn't is bad and related to making the rich even richer and damn the poor. What he doesn't do is make any suggestions as to what could be done different. He taught at West Point, but doesn't mention that means he was part of the Military-Industrial Complex. He reminds me of German apologists after 1945 and Communists after 1989: those weren't us, those were the bad guys, we wouldn't do that.
In an age where for the last twenty years the Republicans under McConnell/Gingrich have treated the Congress as a law blocking legislature, it's hard to find his arguments hold water. The Republicans who are the Party of No, come in for little complaint; yes they're biased and never heard of the honorable opposition, but that's fine.
So, Daniel, do a study of other countries and find somewhere else to live, maybe Denmark which accommodated the Nazis during WW2 (though they helped the Danish Jews escape to Sweden) and with Norway were the last place to throw out the Germans, AFTER the war was over.
June 30, 2021
Fantastic. Written by a West Point professor, but not at all jingoistic or biased. A really strong presentation.
June 6, 2025
a must read!! it’s a long read but worthwhile to understand how we got to where we are.
June 28, 2021
A True History of the United States takes you from before the country's inception all the way to the past few years. As the full title suggests, it covers a lot of overlooked aspects of history-or at least things I myself never learned in history and social studies classes growing up. Before you start this book, be warned that is DENSE! There is a lot to it, and it doesn't skip over eras. Sjursen is very thorough in his writing, and very detailed. I felt like this was a pretty impartial, covering the bad and the good, intensive, and thoughtful compilation of United States history. There isn't a lot of opinion in here, and if/when there is, it is clear, rather than also being presented as fact.
If you are interested in history, especially the parts that are glossed over, and especially the history that doesn't glorify the men that did a lot of bad things, then I'd recommend this book to you. I enjoy reading about history, but this book was one I had to power through because of how much there is within it.
Thank you to Netgalley and Steerforth Press for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.
If you are interested in history, especially the parts that are glossed over, and especially the history that doesn't glorify the men that did a lot of bad things, then I'd recommend this book to you. I enjoy reading about history, but this book was one I had to power through because of how much there is within it.
Thank you to Netgalley and Steerforth Press for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.
November 4, 2021
In the same vein as Zinn’s “A People’s History” and Loewen’s “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” but not quite as good. Like Loewen, Sjursen debunks many myths of American history and challenges the historical narrative of American exceptionalism. And like Zinn, Sjursen focuses on how the American people, especially those belonging to historically and persistently marginalized groups, have been adversely affected by those in power. Sjursen has a very readable and compelling writing style, and I appreciated the many questions that he encouraged the reader to consider (as well as the fact that he didn’t claim to have all the answers). But beyond those questions, there wasn’t a whole lot that was new here. Also, while it admittedly might have been beyond Sjursen’s scope, I would have appreciated a little more detail to support some of his more sweeping arguments, and a longer list of references/notes would have been nice (I’m pretty sure he explained why he kept his reference list short in the book or in an interview about it, but I still prefer having access to those sources). Overall quite good, but not great.
Read
September 5, 2024Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. It took me way too long to realize this was written by just ripping into every president over what they did poorly, cruelly, or dumbly in their presidency. And there is so much. I already was frustrated with so many parts of US history, and this just reminded me of those parts and added more. How do we be better? There is a focus on US warfare, usually detailed by the US indiscriminately killing civilians in the name of something vague. Plus, the at-home issues of stomping on minoritized subsets of the population in the pursuit of power has been a common occurrence that could actually be acknowledged and engaged with. So on the bright side, seems like a lot of room to improve.
I got the strong sense the author would recommend the US veer significantly left if we as Americans would like for the ultra-wealthy to not control everything including us.
I don’t know how to rate history books because they can be framed so many ways. Not a fan of things that say they are the true version; nevertheless, I guess I should say I recommend this, but of course, avoid absolutism.
I got the strong sense the author would recommend the US veer significantly left if we as Americans would like for the ultra-wealthy to not control everything including us.
I don’t know how to rate history books because they can be framed so many ways. Not a fan of things that say they are the true version; nevertheless, I guess I should say I recommend this, but of course, avoid absolutism.
September 18, 2021
Even though my previous reading had prepared me for much of what was in this book, it still had some shocks for me. American history is ugly, and the lies that we've told ourselves over the decades have brought us to the crisis that we are in right now.
Sjursen goes behind the feel-good headlines that we've been taught and uncovers the hard truths. It was startling (but necessary) to put the last thirty years into context and realize that the U.S. has not come as far as we like to tell ourselves we have. Trump was not an anomaly, but rather represented much of what has come before. The system is fixed against ordinary people and ordinary people are going to have to take their power back.
This book does make me want to dive back into more of the history in depth. It's painful, to be sure, but necessary, if this country is ever going to recover.
Sjursen goes behind the feel-good headlines that we've been taught and uncovers the hard truths. It was startling (but necessary) to put the last thirty years into context and realize that the U.S. has not come as far as we like to tell ourselves we have. Trump was not an anomaly, but rather represented much of what has come before. The system is fixed against ordinary people and ordinary people are going to have to take their power back.
This book does make me want to dive back into more of the history in depth. It's painful, to be sure, but necessary, if this country is ever going to recover.
September 1, 2021
This book tackles a lot of the myths of American History. I am not shy about viewing my country's past through an accurate lens. I believe you can be critical of your country and point out its past blunders and still be patriotic and love your country. I went into this book expecting to have already heard all of what would be presented before me, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover some things I didn't know. It was a great book and I would recommend it for anyone looking for a single volume book of US History who isn't scared to look under the carpet and see the country as it really is.
January 22, 2022
This far left leaning book on the history of America is in fact very informative! However every page inside every chapter is incomplete, showing only one side of the history of America, thus why the author probably chose the title "A True History" instead of "The True History" as it's showing a side of history. Furthermore, the author regularly inserts his bias as facts throughout the book. History isn't bias, people are.
February 2, 2022
This read will take you a while but will be worth every minute. If you woke up on November 9, 2016, and wondered, "How did this happen?" this book is for you. A clear, unbiased, comprehensive history of the United States that doesn't excuse away or ignore our glaring mistakes and probably crimes but instead shines a light right on them. I would say that one cannot believe in and promote American exceptionalism without looking at what we have done. We could be exceptional, we are not.
August 4, 2021
It really does tell truth that needs to be told. Without truth-telling there is no reconciliation.
December 1, 2021
This book should be required reading in all US High School History classes, instead of the sugar-coating it as is consistently been done.
This author has nailed the true gradual history of how the US became the US.
Well written. The keyword here is very, very informative.
The Tragic Dawn of Overseas Imperialism: the Philippine-American War? Again, no wonder Americans are loathed.
Korea? Protecting a corrupt South Korean shady government.
Admitting Vietnam was a disaster after decades of claiming that particular (unnecessary) war was 'won'? False pride and Washington BS pushed to the extreme upon the gullible. Lie enough and the liars begin to believe their own BS until the facts come spilling forth well after the incident...
But lying comes all too easy. Presidents do it all the time during their one or two-term tenure; within recent history Trump being the worst of them for this (while enriching himself and his 'friends' as is the norm mostly under the Republicans, though the Democrats are also guilty). Rare is an honest patriot.
Why are Americans generally despised across the world by sticking their noses in where it shouldn't be and usually the cause of multitudes of foreign deaths in the US backing dictators friendly to their policy? Blame government agencies such as the secretive CIA. This includes Isreal refusing to create a two People Nation while still receiving millions annually from the United States which is spent on US-made weaponry.
The bottom line is the rich continue to enrich themselves thanks to US tax policies while the poor, Asian, Black and Native US Americans continue to be shat upon ever since the Anglos landed on North America's eastern shore to absorb this land, and sadly continues to this day. There has been an improvement. Some. The country will splinter due to mismanagement and the world always at ends with itself.
Be it slavery, starting a war by invading Northern Mexico for expansion lands, or killing Native Indians under the same circumstances, the US was created not for national pride or to get away from British rule which was the first intensions, but for sheer evil greed. Arriving from Europe en mass it then got considerably worse.
All White Americans should be ashamed... But it's not in their nature as a government, nation, and people.
"No mention was made of negroes or slaves in this Constitution…because it was thought the very words would contaminate the glorious fabric of American liberty." — Dr. Benjamin Rush in a letter to Dr. John Lettsom (September 1787)
The U.S. Has Only Been At Peace For 21 Years Total Since Its Initial Formation!
http://www.informationclearinghouse.i...
At some point in the future, I can see an Invasion of Pacific Western Canada. Not only for warmongering for more land, but mostly water resources...
Please tell me that I am wrong?
Outstanding book.
This author has nailed the true gradual history of how the US became the US.
Well written. The keyword here is very, very informative.
The Tragic Dawn of Overseas Imperialism: the Philippine-American War? Again, no wonder Americans are loathed.
Korea? Protecting a corrupt South Korean shady government.
Admitting Vietnam was a disaster after decades of claiming that particular (unnecessary) war was 'won'? False pride and Washington BS pushed to the extreme upon the gullible. Lie enough and the liars begin to believe their own BS until the facts come spilling forth well after the incident...
But lying comes all too easy. Presidents do it all the time during their one or two-term tenure; within recent history Trump being the worst of them for this (while enriching himself and his 'friends' as is the norm mostly under the Republicans, though the Democrats are also guilty). Rare is an honest patriot.
Why are Americans generally despised across the world by sticking their noses in where it shouldn't be and usually the cause of multitudes of foreign deaths in the US backing dictators friendly to their policy? Blame government agencies such as the secretive CIA. This includes Isreal refusing to create a two People Nation while still receiving millions annually from the United States which is spent on US-made weaponry.
The bottom line is the rich continue to enrich themselves thanks to US tax policies while the poor, Asian, Black and Native US Americans continue to be shat upon ever since the Anglos landed on North America's eastern shore to absorb this land, and sadly continues to this day. There has been an improvement. Some. The country will splinter due to mismanagement and the world always at ends with itself.
Be it slavery, starting a war by invading Northern Mexico for expansion lands, or killing Native Indians under the same circumstances, the US was created not for national pride or to get away from British rule which was the first intensions, but for sheer evil greed. Arriving from Europe en mass it then got considerably worse.
All White Americans should be ashamed... But it's not in their nature as a government, nation, and people.
"No mention was made of negroes or slaves in this Constitution…because it was thought the very words would contaminate the glorious fabric of American liberty." — Dr. Benjamin Rush in a letter to Dr. John Lettsom (September 1787)
The U.S. Has Only Been At Peace For 21 Years Total Since Its Initial Formation!
http://www.informationclearinghouse.i...
At some point in the future, I can see an Invasion of Pacific Western Canada. Not only for warmongering for more land, but mostly water resources...
Please tell me that I am wrong?
Outstanding book.
July 13, 2021
Sjursen presents his information in a sort of myth v fact format, challenging for me because I’ve never heard of many of these myths, being Canadian. But once he got into the meat of things, I learned a lot. With me he’s preaching to the converted when he debunks American exceptionalism, and American psychology remains mysterious to me, but this book gave me a better sense of its roots and evolution. It’s not an uplifting read, more a very heavy dose of reality. As always I take hope from grassroots activists driven more by values than politics, but I agree with the author that there is little inspiration to be found in political cycles. (If you read this, Canadians, I recommend following it with Dave Meslin’s Teardown, about civic engagement. Keep the faith.)
Want to read
March 25, 2021Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss.
January 2, 2023
I have tried my damndest to keep this review short. I wanted to read something critical to modern America for the 4th of July weekend but there is no audiobook for “When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973” (1996) so I got this one.
The first third was interesting, covering a lot about anti-federalism, pre-revolutionary stuff, the war of 1812, and other things I didn’t really know about. Then we get to Lincoln, reconstruction, and the 20th century and it’s just more stuff I’ve heard a thousand times.
This is like baby’s first “US Bad” book. It’s a broad overview of things our US history textbooks whitewashes, ignores, or covers in half a paragraph. The content is decent, but it has to keep moving to cover ~400 years of crap. It was written by a history professor and really reads like a guy going through his lesson plan.
Once the book got to the 20th century it was just “then we got this president and he sucked because XYZ and the things his detractors said about him weren’t true but he definitely wasn’t as great as people remember” rinse and repeat from until we get to Obama. He’s no Marxist (he teaches at West Point, the military academy), but he does criticize all presidents despite the color of their tie.
Definitely read this if you want to understand why American Exceptionalism is bad. If you already know that, check it out to fill in some gaps to that knowledge, as this does cover a lot.
The long short of it is: The US is an empire, the Civil War was about slavery, the revolutionary war was about slavery, the Mexican-American war was about slavery and imperialism. The Spanish-American War, WW1, WW2, and all the rest of the US wars were about imperialism. The US was built upon white supremacy and it stands as a white supremacist nation to this day. All presidents are war criminals. Obama was also bad and a war criminal.
Alright I lied. There were some provocative quotes. Here are my favorites:
~~ 1600s to 1700s~~
Bacon’s Rebellion (1676-1677) was “a populist army savagely assaulted hated Native Americans and aristocrats alike. A mix of black and white former indentured servants demonstrated the fragility of Virginian society. The planter class was terrified. To avoid — at all costs — a repeat, the landed gentry made a devil’s bargain. To ensure stability, they realized they must co-opt some of the poor without ceding their own privileged status. Enter America’s original sins: racism and white privilege. Plantation owners simply hired fewer indentured servants and became more reliant on black African chattel slaves for their labor force. […] Bacon’s Rebellion linked land, labor, and race in nefarious ways. Landownership remained the path to freedom. Labor remained essential to profiting from the land, and race came to define the relationship between land and labor. After 1676 a class-based system morphed into a race-based system of labor and social structure.“
“Colonial New England was inhabited by zealots — conformist and oppressive fundamentalists who strictly policed the boundaries of their exalted theocracy. Forget the Thanksgiving feast: this was Islamic State on the Atlantic!”
George Washington started the tradition of US Presidents all being War Criminals. He started the French and Indian War (1754–1763) “This was supposed to have been as much a diplomatic as a military mission, and no state of war had been declared. Washington’s choice to open fire was strategically and ethically questionable; however, his inability to control his native allies and the assassination of a prisoner must certainly constitute a war crime.”
We’ve been an empire since before we were even an independent country. “Despite contemporary memories to the contrary, in the coming revolution against Britain the colonists hardly rebelled against the concept of empire itself. Rather, they desired a new, expansive American empire, unhindered by London and stretching west over the Appalachians and deep into native lands.”
Most people of the colonies weren’t even on board with independence. “Probably no more than one-third of all colonists were actually anti-imperial ‘patriots.’ Our Founding Fathers and their followers weren’t even in the majority.” One third wanted independence, one third supported the British Empire, and one third were fence sitters. Not a ringing endorsement for bloody revolution.
“Some colonists simply resented military occupation. The British decision to send uniformed regular army troops to rebellious hotbeds like Boston had an effect opposite to what was intended. This is an old story. American soldiers in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq have learned this lesson again and again as foreign military presence angered the locals and united disparate political, ethnic, and sectarian groups in a nationalist insurgency.” Burn.
“The patriot minority used threats and violence to enforce their narrative and thrust their politics on the loyal and the apathetic alike. There was little that was democratic about it. Discomforting as it may be, the patriot movement was hardly a Gandhi-like campaign of peaceful civil disobedience. Patriots were passionate, they were relentless, and they were armed. Firearms were ubiquitous in the colonies, more so, even, than in Britain. Guns are as American as apple pie. So is street violence.” Remember that the next time the White Moderate tells you to be peaceful.
The Revolutionary war was about slavery. The Brits were on their way to abolish the practice, and slavery kept the colonies’ economies flowing and kept the wealthiest colonizers (the “founding fathers”) obscenely wealthy. George Washington was the richest person in the newly founded country:
“The ostensibly tyrannical British practiced very little chattel slavery within the United Kingdom itself. In fact, in the Somerset v. Stewart case of 1772, England’s highest common-law court ruled that chattel slavery was illegal. This judgment spooked many southern colonial gentlemen, who began to fear that the British metropolitan authorities were ‘unreliable defenders of slavery,’ and this convinced many to join the patriot cause.”
Native Americans and black people weren’t stupid. They were fighting against the “patriots” because the “patriots” were going to genocide and/or continue to enslave them. “In proportion to their numbers in the population, black men were more likely than whites to serve as combatants in the Revolution, only by and large they fought against the side that had proclaimed all men were created equal.”
“Lord Dunmore raised eight hundred to a thousand slave volunteers by offering freedom to those who would flee their masters and gather under his banner. Word of Dunmore’s proclamation spread rapidly through the colonies, giving hope to slaves and striking fear in planters throughout the Americas. It convinced many fence-sitting slaveholders that there could now be no reconciliation with the Crown. As Edward Rutledge, a South Carolina signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote, the Dunmore proclamation effected ‘an eternal separation between Great Britain and the colonies…more than any other expedient.’”
Blah blah blah Genocides, systematic rape, backstabbing the natives, slavery, blah blah blah. Tale as old as time.
The founding fathers really did not like Democracy. They were elitists. They wanted the rich and powerful and white and male people to be in charge. The Constitution was written in secret by (and for) those of wealth and power. They wanted to keep their wealth and power so they wrote the rules accordingly. And don’t give me that “it was just the way things were back then” because there were plenty of people who recognized the indefensibly unjust reality these elitists were forcing upon them at the time.
There was a lot of interesting stuff about federalism vs anti-federalism, and apparently the Constitution was treasonous at the time because the Articles of Confederation were in effect at the time. My thoughts on federalism have wavered over the years and now I might just have to support US Balkanization, as that would result (at least in the short term) in less global imperialism, which would be better for the 3rd world.
~~~Okay but how many US wars were started with false flags, exactly?~~~
I kept getting this recurring theme popping up as I read. A LOT of US wars were started under false pretenses.
• War of 1812, supposedly declared because Britain was commandeering US merchant vessels which they claimed were full of British deserters. (The Brit’s were correct in this). So the US declared war first, the Brit’s rescinded the law that let them commandeer ships, but the rambunctious young empire would never let a good war go to waste, and used it to do more Native genocide, colonizing, and even tried to conquer Canada. But by golly those Canooks came down and lit the White House on fire. Hilarious. The powers that be claimed the Brit’s were trying to take their colonies back (false).
• Mexican-American War - “Until 1836, Texas was a distant northern province of the new Mexican Republic, a republic that had only recently won its independence from the Spanish Empire, in 1821.” Mexico had abolished slavery, but a bunch of Yankees kept crossing the border south into Texas, the province of Mexico, bringing their slaves. The Mexican government tried to enforce their own country’s laws (about how you can’t have slaves any more) within their own country’s borders (Texas, a part of Mexico). Santa Anna marched his army north, so a bunch the invading Yankees held up in the Alamo (a fort). “The men inside the Alamo walls were pro-slavery insurgents. As applied to them, Texan, in any real sense, is a misnomer. Two-thirds were recent arrivals from the United States and never intended to submit to sovereign Mexican authority. What the Battle of the Alamo did do was whip up a fury of nationalism in the United States and cause thousands more recruits to illegally ‘jump the border’ — oh, the irony — and join the rebellion in Texas.” So we claimed we were attacked when we were the aggressors…hmmmmmm…….
The US stole Texas from Mexico because the migrants weren’t obeying the laws. Oh god I hate irony so much my head hurts. Manifest Destiny is just Imperialism. Amerika Bad.
• Spanish-American War - USS Maine blew up on its own, but we didn’t let that tragedy go to waste, so we declared war and scooped up more colonies.
• WW2 - We were already helping the allies well before the Japanese attacked.
I’m keeping this review short so I’m cutting this off here.
The first third was interesting, covering a lot about anti-federalism, pre-revolutionary stuff, the war of 1812, and other things I didn’t really know about. Then we get to Lincoln, reconstruction, and the 20th century and it’s just more stuff I’ve heard a thousand times.
This is like baby’s first “US Bad” book. It’s a broad overview of things our US history textbooks whitewashes, ignores, or covers in half a paragraph. The content is decent, but it has to keep moving to cover ~400 years of crap. It was written by a history professor and really reads like a guy going through his lesson plan.
Once the book got to the 20th century it was just “then we got this president and he sucked because XYZ and the things his detractors said about him weren’t true but he definitely wasn’t as great as people remember” rinse and repeat from until we get to Obama. He’s no Marxist (he teaches at West Point, the military academy), but he does criticize all presidents despite the color of their tie.
Definitely read this if you want to understand why American Exceptionalism is bad. If you already know that, check it out to fill in some gaps to that knowledge, as this does cover a lot.
The long short of it is: The US is an empire, the Civil War was about slavery, the revolutionary war was about slavery, the Mexican-American war was about slavery and imperialism. The Spanish-American War, WW1, WW2, and all the rest of the US wars were about imperialism. The US was built upon white supremacy and it stands as a white supremacist nation to this day. All presidents are war criminals. Obama was also bad and a war criminal.
Alright I lied. There were some provocative quotes. Here are my favorites:
~~ 1600s to 1700s~~
Bacon’s Rebellion (1676-1677) was “a populist army savagely assaulted hated Native Americans and aristocrats alike. A mix of black and white former indentured servants demonstrated the fragility of Virginian society. The planter class was terrified. To avoid — at all costs — a repeat, the landed gentry made a devil’s bargain. To ensure stability, they realized they must co-opt some of the poor without ceding their own privileged status. Enter America’s original sins: racism and white privilege. Plantation owners simply hired fewer indentured servants and became more reliant on black African chattel slaves for their labor force. […] Bacon’s Rebellion linked land, labor, and race in nefarious ways. Landownership remained the path to freedom. Labor remained essential to profiting from the land, and race came to define the relationship between land and labor. After 1676 a class-based system morphed into a race-based system of labor and social structure.“
“Colonial New England was inhabited by zealots — conformist and oppressive fundamentalists who strictly policed the boundaries of their exalted theocracy. Forget the Thanksgiving feast: this was Islamic State on the Atlantic!”
George Washington started the tradition of US Presidents all being War Criminals. He started the French and Indian War (1754–1763) “This was supposed to have been as much a diplomatic as a military mission, and no state of war had been declared. Washington’s choice to open fire was strategically and ethically questionable; however, his inability to control his native allies and the assassination of a prisoner must certainly constitute a war crime.”
We’ve been an empire since before we were even an independent country. “Despite contemporary memories to the contrary, in the coming revolution against Britain the colonists hardly rebelled against the concept of empire itself. Rather, they desired a new, expansive American empire, unhindered by London and stretching west over the Appalachians and deep into native lands.”
Most people of the colonies weren’t even on board with independence. “Probably no more than one-third of all colonists were actually anti-imperial ‘patriots.’ Our Founding Fathers and their followers weren’t even in the majority.” One third wanted independence, one third supported the British Empire, and one third were fence sitters. Not a ringing endorsement for bloody revolution.
“Some colonists simply resented military occupation. The British decision to send uniformed regular army troops to rebellious hotbeds like Boston had an effect opposite to what was intended. This is an old story. American soldiers in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq have learned this lesson again and again as foreign military presence angered the locals and united disparate political, ethnic, and sectarian groups in a nationalist insurgency.” Burn.
“The patriot minority used threats and violence to enforce their narrative and thrust their politics on the loyal and the apathetic alike. There was little that was democratic about it. Discomforting as it may be, the patriot movement was hardly a Gandhi-like campaign of peaceful civil disobedience. Patriots were passionate, they were relentless, and they were armed. Firearms were ubiquitous in the colonies, more so, even, than in Britain. Guns are as American as apple pie. So is street violence.” Remember that the next time the White Moderate tells you to be peaceful.
The Revolutionary war was about slavery. The Brits were on their way to abolish the practice, and slavery kept the colonies’ economies flowing and kept the wealthiest colonizers (the “founding fathers”) obscenely wealthy. George Washington was the richest person in the newly founded country:
“The ostensibly tyrannical British practiced very little chattel slavery within the United Kingdom itself. In fact, in the Somerset v. Stewart case of 1772, England’s highest common-law court ruled that chattel slavery was illegal. This judgment spooked many southern colonial gentlemen, who began to fear that the British metropolitan authorities were ‘unreliable defenders of slavery,’ and this convinced many to join the patriot cause.”
Native Americans and black people weren’t stupid. They were fighting against the “patriots” because the “patriots” were going to genocide and/or continue to enslave them. “In proportion to their numbers in the population, black men were more likely than whites to serve as combatants in the Revolution, only by and large they fought against the side that had proclaimed all men were created equal.”
“Lord Dunmore raised eight hundred to a thousand slave volunteers by offering freedom to those who would flee their masters and gather under his banner. Word of Dunmore’s proclamation spread rapidly through the colonies, giving hope to slaves and striking fear in planters throughout the Americas. It convinced many fence-sitting slaveholders that there could now be no reconciliation with the Crown. As Edward Rutledge, a South Carolina signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote, the Dunmore proclamation effected ‘an eternal separation between Great Britain and the colonies…more than any other expedient.’”
Blah blah blah Genocides, systematic rape, backstabbing the natives, slavery, blah blah blah. Tale as old as time.
The founding fathers really did not like Democracy. They were elitists. They wanted the rich and powerful and white and male people to be in charge. The Constitution was written in secret by (and for) those of wealth and power. They wanted to keep their wealth and power so they wrote the rules accordingly. And don’t give me that “it was just the way things were back then” because there were plenty of people who recognized the indefensibly unjust reality these elitists were forcing upon them at the time.
There was a lot of interesting stuff about federalism vs anti-federalism, and apparently the Constitution was treasonous at the time because the Articles of Confederation were in effect at the time. My thoughts on federalism have wavered over the years and now I might just have to support US Balkanization, as that would result (at least in the short term) in less global imperialism, which would be better for the 3rd world.
~~~Okay but how many US wars were started with false flags, exactly?~~~
I kept getting this recurring theme popping up as I read. A LOT of US wars were started under false pretenses.
• War of 1812, supposedly declared because Britain was commandeering US merchant vessels which they claimed were full of British deserters. (The Brit’s were correct in this). So the US declared war first, the Brit’s rescinded the law that let them commandeer ships, but the rambunctious young empire would never let a good war go to waste, and used it to do more Native genocide, colonizing, and even tried to conquer Canada. But by golly those Canooks came down and lit the White House on fire. Hilarious. The powers that be claimed the Brit’s were trying to take their colonies back (false).
• Mexican-American War - “Until 1836, Texas was a distant northern province of the new Mexican Republic, a republic that had only recently won its independence from the Spanish Empire, in 1821.” Mexico had abolished slavery, but a bunch of Yankees kept crossing the border south into Texas, the province of Mexico, bringing their slaves. The Mexican government tried to enforce their own country’s laws (about how you can’t have slaves any more) within their own country’s borders (Texas, a part of Mexico). Santa Anna marched his army north, so a bunch the invading Yankees held up in the Alamo (a fort). “The men inside the Alamo walls were pro-slavery insurgents. As applied to them, Texan, in any real sense, is a misnomer. Two-thirds were recent arrivals from the United States and never intended to submit to sovereign Mexican authority. What the Battle of the Alamo did do was whip up a fury of nationalism in the United States and cause thousands more recruits to illegally ‘jump the border’ — oh, the irony — and join the rebellion in Texas.” So we claimed we were attacked when we were the aggressors…hmmmmmm…….
The US stole Texas from Mexico because the migrants weren’t obeying the laws. Oh god I hate irony so much my head hurts. Manifest Destiny is just Imperialism. Amerika Bad.
• Spanish-American War - USS Maine blew up on its own, but we didn’t let that tragedy go to waste, so we declared war and scooped up more colonies.
• WW2 - We were already helping the allies well before the Japanese attacked.
I’m keeping this review short so I’m cutting this off here.
October 5, 2024
Very clear, unbiased, well researched. I learned truly so much about the origin and life of the United States. We are incredibly flawed. It is organized basically by each president which makes sense but also provides context for current day. I’ll probably re-read eventually.
September 2, 2025
To understand the present, one needs to understand the past. And America's past is far more complicated (most often less heroic) than what most conventional history courses have taught us. This is a timely book for those of us watching Project 2025 with despair.
February 17, 2025
extremely important read!! i implore each one of you to pick it up, especially at times like this it's important to read and be educated, the past reflects our present!
December 13, 2025
America, dude… You got issues.
June 27, 2025
WOW I knew it was bad but not that bad….. honestly putting today’s events into context with American history is scary but I get it now. Solid learning experience.
October 25, 2022
I have not read this book from beginning to end but have purchased it and use it as a resource. It is outstanding - very readable and its perspective is very balanced.
October 23, 2021
Eye-opening and thought provoking book that fills in a lot of the blanks of my knowledge base of US history that I didn't know I had. It is not an easy read, but it is definitely a worthwhile read.
December 9, 2025
So this was a professors lesson plan for an American history class. That makes sense. Was really fascinated by a lot of the pre constitution stuff specifically the section on the articles of confederation. Filled in some gaps about the revolution and the civil war, most of the post reconstruction stuff wasn’t too knew to me and everything post JFK I’d say I wasn’t learning anything new. Good as a large general text to show myself where i can learn more about on American history. Would maybe buy a physical copy and go back as a reference for specific sections if I’m looking for quick context. A fine read.
August 28, 2021
So much to unpack bout our country and all of the horrors we imposed among our our people and around the world. I feel ashamed by what I didn’t know and, honestly, helpless to affect change. But hey, I’m smarter for reading this book. And I’m moving on to a lighter read. 😁
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