The Untold History of the United States

“An enormous fortress of prejudices, privileges, superstitions, lies, exactions, abuses, violences, iniquities, and darkness still stands erect upon this world, with its towers of hatred. It must be cast down. This monstrous mass must be made to crumble.” So wrote Victor Hugo of the French revolutionary protagonists in Les Misérables (1862) (p. 743). But he might have been describing the guiding impetus behind The Untold History of the United States, which exhibits a similar impulse to throw light in “terrible handfuls” into the eyes of the unbelieving—to arouse, push, shock—and “not to let up until scales have noisily fallen. …After Aeschylus, Thrasybulus; after Diderot, Danton” (ibid.). And after Georges Danton, Oliver Stone. In ten hour-long episodes, Stone and his cowriter, Peter Kuznick, set out to recast U.S. history from World War II to the present. After four chapters devoted to an examination of the war and its...