Cherry-Picking Our History: The Untold History of the United States

[mystery-ak]

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/feb/21/oliver-stone-cherry-picking-our-history/?pagination=false&printpage=true


Cherry-Picking Our History
February 21, 2013
Sean Wilentz


The Untold History of the United States
a book and television series by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick
Gallery Books, 750 pp., $30.00; Showtime, ten episodes         

Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick’s new book and accompanying ten-part televised documentary have a misleading title. Most if not all of the interpretations that they present in The Untold History of the United States—from the war in the Philippines to the one in Afghanistan—have appeared in revisionist histories of American foreign policy written over the last fifty years. Challenged by early reviewers, Stone and Kuznick have essentially conceded the point about their sources and claimed that what they call the “revisionist narrative” that informs their book has in truth become “the dominant narrative among university-based historians.”

The real problem, they say, is that this revisionism has yet to penetrate the public schools, the mainstream media, and “those parts of America that cling to the notion of American exceptionalism.” Their version of history may not be untold, but “it has been almost entirely ‘unlearned.’” And so what originally sounded like a startling account of a hidden history is in fact largely a recapitulation and popularization of a particular stream of academic work, in a book that would more properly be called The Unlearned History of the United States—if the scholarship and the authors’ reworking of it were thorough, factually accurate, and historically convincing.1

continued at link

[massadvj]

All writing of history is by its very nature cherry picking. 

[happyg]

Ten years ago, I took an American history course at the local college. An elderly woman, probably close to eighty years old, answered an essay question, and got points taken off for 'historical errors'. The complained to the instructor that the book was wrong, and she was right. She claimed, "After all, I lived it". He gave her the credits back. I don't recall the essay question, but it had something to do with America during WWll. Sometime later, he told the class she was right, and the book was wrong.