REVIEW: ‘Untold’ U.S. history emerges in Stone, Kuznick offering

This book was inspired by the Showtime series “Oliver Stone’s The Untold History of the United States.”

Intellectually, it may be simpler, certainly less time-consuming, to grasp the salient points made in the hour-long episodes of the TV series than read the book.

After all, the book checks in at 750 pages, but reading it is worth the effort. In the foreword, the authors – Stone, the famous film director, and historian Peter Kuznick – make it clear that the series and the book challenge the “basic narrative of U.S. history that most Americans are taught.”

	“The Untold History of the United States” by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick Gallery Books, $30, 750 pp.

That challenge isn’t revising 20th century American history. It’s revisiting our history so Americans can see what overlooked facts they ought to know about.

In the chapter on The New Deal, the books explains that by 1937 the country was slowly climbing out of the Great Depression. But President Roosevelt decided to cut spending and balance the budget in thinking that progress was self-sustaining. “The economy plummeted almost overnight. … Stocks rapidly lost one-third of their value and corporate profits fell by 80 percent. Unemployment skyrocketed anew as millions lost jobs,” the book states.

In the chapter on “World War II: Who Really Defeated Germany?” the authors’ short answer to that question is the Soviet Union. The Russians were fighting the Nazis long before England, France or the United States entered as allies. Actually, the Russians were even temporary treaty partners in dividing up control of Poland. But then Germany ripped up the treaty and sent 3.2 million soldiers to invade Russia.

And in the intriguing chapter on the atomic bomb, the book reports that many scientists were trying to persuade President Truman to not drop the bomb on Japan to end the war.

One example of the anti-bomb sentiment cited in the book was a petition in the early summer of 1945 signed by 155 scientists at Chicago’s Met Lab and the uranium plant at Oak Ridge. The petition was banned at Los Alamos and Gen. Leslie Groves, who headed the Manhattan Project, was alerted to it and made sure it didn’t reach Secretary of War Henry Stimson or the president until after the bomb was dropped, according to the book.

In the foreword’s conclusion, the authors say they hope the book and TV series will “prove useful in the fight for a more just, humane, democratic and equitable world.”