A companion to Oliver Stone’s ten-part documentary series of the same name, this guide offers a people’s history of the American Empire: “a critical overview of US foreign policy…indispensable” (former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev); “brilliant, a masterpiece!” (Daniel Ellsberg); “Oliver Stone’s new book is as riveting, eye-opening, and thought-provoking as any history book you will ever read. It achieves what history, at its best, ought to do: presents a mountain of previously unknown facts that makes you question and re-examine many of your long-held assumptions about the most influential events” (Glenn Greenwald). In November 2012, Showtime debuted a ten-part documentary series based on Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick’s The Untold History of the United States. The book and documentary looked back at human events that, at the time, went underreported, but also crucially shaped America’s unique and complex history over the twentieth century. From the atomic bombing of Japan to the Cold War and fall of Communism, this concise version of the larger book is adapted for the general reader. Complete with poignant photos, arresting illustrations, and little-known documents, The Concise Untold History of the United States covers the rise of the American empire and national security state from the late nineteenth century through the Obama administration, putting it all together to show how deeply rooted the seemingly aberrant policies of the Bush-Cheney administration are in the nation’s past and why it has proven so difficult for Obama to change course. In this concise and indispensible guide, Kuznick and Stone (who Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills has called America’s own “Dostoevsky behind a camera”) challenge prevailing orthodoxies to reveal the dark truth about the rise and fall of American imperialism.

本作は、米国が美化してきた正史を拒絶し、帝国主義の影を抉り出す衝撃的な「対抗史」です。オリバー・ストーンの激情と史学者の緻密な分析が融合し、ドストエフスキー的な深淵な視座で権力の変遷を告発します。読者の価値観を根底から揺さぶる、挑発的で一級の思想書です。 映像版が視覚的衝撃を放つのに対し、本書は膨大な事実を整理し、深い思索の場を提供します。映像の疾走感と、テキストならではの多層的な深みを往還することで、歴史の歪みがより鮮明に浮き彫りになるでしょう。文字でしか到達し得ない真実が、ここに凝縮されています。