Book Review: "The Untold History of the United States" by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick

 

4/5 stars

*Spoiler alert!*

I’ll be honest, this book was a difficult read, taking me about a month to get through.

The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick is a dense, dark survey of the underbelly of American politics. Companion to a history docuseries of similar content, this book takes readers for quite the ride, from the past to the recent present. (The updated version, which I am reviewing here, covers former President Obama’s second term and halfway into former President Trump’s term.) So, we’ve got historical coverage for events through 2018.

One cannot help but feel despair when surveying a history of economic, political, racial, sexual, and gender violence entwined with American foreign and domestic policy, a repeating pattern of oppression that runs counter to our idealism about America being a role-model democracy. No presidential administration is spared in Untold History.

Admittedly, this is refreshing. No administration is perfect, and people literally have constitutionally protected rights to freedom of expression. This includes critique of elected governmental representatives when they are moving in a direction against their constituents’ wishes, not to mention voting them out of office. No president or administration is perfect, and all have done some damage, more or less, to America and other countries. American citizens should go into elections with their eyes open about all the issues and informed of their country’s history.

The problem is that damage is cumulative, leading to our current moment in 2023 where we are seeing very serious threats to democracy in America and around the world, not to mention a dangerous, scary resurgence of fascism. There’s war in Europe, as Ukraine battles Russia to defend its sovereign territory. American women no longer have the right to make decisions about their own bodies and reproductive lives. Oh, and a criminal former president is running for the next presidential election in 2024. And climate change is still a thing!

(I could go on, but we have all been traumatized enough by the daily firehouse of bad news.)

Some presidents try to steer the ship of state in a direction of equality for all of America’s diverse citizenry but run up against systemic issues that make reform all but impossible. And other administrations would prefer to keep things status quo or even go backwards to freedoms for the few, not the many. Not to mention that historically, periods of reform are almost always followed by periods of reactionary pushback or run parallel to them. It’s frustrating for those of us who know our country can be better.

“Struggles for racial, sexual, and gender equality have won important victories along the way as have efforts to combat global warming, ban nuclear weapons, win higher wages and benefits for working people, redistribute wealth, halt rape and violence against women, and defend health care and immigrant rights. But we’re in a race against the forces of entropy and destruction that are also gaining momentum. Paraphrasing Unitarian minister and abolitionist Theodore Parker, Martin Luther King, Jr. observed, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ We no longer have the luxury of a long arc. We must bend it faster.”

After all that we’ve learned here, it might be difficult to get out of bed and do something about the present we find ourselves in, but we have to keep hope alive:

“As bleak as things might seem, despair is an attitude we can’t afford.”

If we give into despair, then it truly is over. As long as we try to make our country one we all want to live in and pass down to future generations, then doom is not an absolute certainty.

Happy reading!

--BookOwl