I did not plan to write again about Oliver Stoneâ??s and Peter Kuznickâ??s Untold History of the United States, their Showtime documentary series and accompanying book. Three things, however, have prompted me to once again address the series and its continuing distortions and lies.
First: in the January 10 issue of The New York Review of Books, the publisher of Stone and Kuznickâ??s book â?? Gallery Books â?? took out a full page ad proclaiming the companion volume to the TV series an â??Instant New York Times Bestseller,â? although when I searched the paperâ??s list I could not find it anywhere, even in their extended list of non-fiction bestsellers.
The ad reproduces blurbs by a group of major U.S. historians â?? many of them leftists â?? but includes some mainstream and well-known scholars. Lloyd Gardner of Rutgers University calls their book one that â??many would consider impossible.â? Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian (London) terms it a â??counter narrative to the enormous tide of hogwash that dominates most public discussion of America.â? Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post says it is â??grounded in indisputable fact.â? Historian Doug Brinkley says that the two grapple â??with the unsavory legacy of American militarism.â? Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame: â??Brilliant, masterpiece!â? And Pulitzer Prize winning historian Martin Sherwin, in a truly over-the-top comment, calls it â??the most important historical narrative of this century, a carefully researched and brilliantly rendered account.â?
The century is rather young, and in fact it might be the only narrative yet to appear â?¦ but anyone who reads it knows that it is not well-researched and is nothing but a synthesis of long-standing leftist â??revisionistâ? history. All of these writers and historians, in praising the Stone-Kuznick work in such glowing terms, reveal only their own total ignorance about the history of the Cold War.
I doubt that those who have given it such generous blurbs have actually even read it carefully. A clue as to the position of the authors is given by the first blurb, written by none other than Mikhail Gorbachev â?? the former Soviet premier writes that what is at stake â??is whether the United States will choose to be the policeman of â??Pax Americana,â?? â?¦ or a partner with other nations.â? It should come as no surprise that the USSRâ??s last leader would praise a book and TV series that depicts the Soviet Union as being right in its foreign policy during World War II and in the Cold War; the others who have offered their unstinting praise have no such excuse.
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