``Stone's star-power will undoubtedly ensure a wide audience for The Untold History of the United States and help to popularize its critical interpretation. Apart from a few questionable judgments (the chapter on Kennedy stands out for me), the book is factually grounded, deeply-researched and sound in its analysis. Conservative attacks on the book have largely rehashed the spurious reasoning of McCarthyites, claiming for example that Henry Wallace was a dupe of communists when this was not the case. Celebratory depictions of post-World War II American history are increasingly untenable given the evidence that has emerged from declassified documents surrounding the wide-scale interference by the United States in Third World countries, the voracious drive for access to mineral resources and oil, and U.S. support for murderous dictators and death squad regimes. New research on the U.S. in Vietnam, furthermore, has revealed a systematic record of atrocities that is even worse than many antiwar critics in the 1960s believed, while the Iraq War and Arab Spring has confirmed the folly of trying to advance democracy through force. The growth of widescale social inequalities and environmental degradation has also exposed the bankruptcy of unfettered free market capitalism, with millions of people around the world recognizing the need for fundamental change. The time is on the whole ripe for Americans to begin to confront the dark side of their past, and to draw the appropriate lessons from history as a new age of transformation and reform dawns upon us. The Untold History serves as a valuable resource in the fulfillment of these ends.''
This is a fair review of the book and I agree with the questionable judgement on the Kennedy administration. I think that is Stone's want to be history and not history. In retrospect Kennedy was a cold war liberal and had a difficult time trying to distinguish himself from Nixon on any foreign policy front. His administration was deeply involved in the assassination of Diem and were pissed that the Vietnamese army officers were just as rotten as Diem. They traded rot for rot. Kennedy's own assassination put Vietnam on the back burner for months...
On the whole the book is vastly depressing because there is never a moment of triumph, simply because there was never a moment of triumph.
CG