""Thought-provoking-a must read for
everyone
seeking a firm grasp of accurate American history.""
-Kirkus (starred review)
Brilliant, readable, and raw. Maj. (ret.) Danny Sjursen, who served combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at West Point, delivers a true epic and the perfect companion to Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.
""Thought-provoking-a must read for
everyone
seeking a firm grasp of accurate American history."" -Kirkus (starred review)
Brilliant, readable, and raw. Maj. (ret.) Danny Sjursen, who served combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at West Point, delivers a true epic and the perfect companion to Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.
Sjursen shifts the lens and challenges readers to think critically and to apply common sense to their understanding of our nation's past-and present-so we can view history as never before.
A True History of the United States was inspired by a course that Sjursentaught to cadets at West Point, his alma mater. With chapter titles such as ""Patriots or Insurgents?"" and ""The Decade That Roared and Wept"", A True History is accurate with respect to the facts and intellectually honest in its presentation and analysis.
Essential reading for every American with a conscience. Meticulously researched, Sjursen provides a more complete sense of history and encourages readers to view our country objectively. Sjursen's powerful storytelling reveals balanced portraits of key figures and the role they played.
""Sjursen exposes the dominant historical narrative as at best myth, and at times a lie . . . He brings out from the shadows those who struggled, often at the cost of their own lives, for equality and justice. Their stories, so often ignored or trivialized, give us examples of who we should emulate and who we must become."" -Chris Hedges, author of Empire of Illusion and America- The Farewell Tour
By:
Daniel A. Sjursen
Imprint: Steerforth Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 215mm,
Width: 139mm,
Weight: 368g
ISBN: 9781586422530
ISBN 10: 1586422537
Pages: 784
Publication Date: 17 August 2021
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Preface 1. Original Sin — American Slavery, American Freedom 2. Roots in Religious Zealotry 3. Whose Empire? 4. Patriots or Insurgents? 5. Independence and Civil War (Part One) 6. Whose Revolution? (Part Two) 7. Flowering or Excess of Democracy 8. Counter-Revolution of 1787? — New Constitution, New Nation 9. George Washington’s Turbulent Administration 10. Liberty Versus Order 11. The Jeffersonian Enigma 12. The Forgotten and Peculiar War of 1812 13. Birth of an Era of Revolutions 14. Andrew Jackson’s White Male World and the Start of Modern Politics 15. The Fraudulent Mexican-American War 16. A Broken Union 17. The Second American Civil War — The Slow, Perilous Shift to Emancipation 18. Reconstruction, a Failed Experiment? 19. Lies We Tell Ourselves About the Old West 20. Wealth and Squalor in the Progressive Era 21. The Tragic Dawn of Overseas Imperialism 22. A Savage War to End All Wars, and a Failed Peace 23. The Decade That Roared and Wept 24. FDR and His Deal for a Desperate Time 25. From Isolationism to a Second World Conflagration 26. Just How Good Was the “Good War”? 27. A Cruel, Costly, and Anxious Cold War 28. JFK’s Cold War Chains 29. Vietnam, an American Tragedy 30. Civil Rights, a Dream Deferred 31. Nixon’s Dark Legacy 32. Carter’s Cage of Crisis 33. The Reagan Revolution 34. Bush the Elder — Struggling in Reagan’s Shadow 35. Bill Clinton, the New Democrat 36. Bush II and the Birth of Forever War 37. The Obama Disappointment Epilogue: A Once, Always, and Future Empire
Daniel A. Sjursen recently retired from the US Army where he had reached the rank of major and served as a history instructor at West Point, his alma mater. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the author of Ghost Riders of Baghdad- Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge and Patriotic Dissent- America in the Age of Endless War. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet and listen to his podcast Fortress on a Hill, co-hosted with fellow vet Chris Henri Henrikson.
Reviews for A True History of the United States
An engaging warts-and-all history of the U.S. meant to better educate those who fight for it...Strongly written and thought-provoking-a must read for nonhistorians seeking a firm grasp of accurate American history. -Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Sjursen's analysis compels the reader to think critically, in order to move beyond the half-truths that keep us from collectively solving America's most persistent and damaging inequities. -Seattle Book Review Eye-opening and thought-provoking . . . for anyone wanting a solid and more complete understanding of our shared history, this is a great book to have. -Lily Bartels of The Open Door Bookstore on Northeast Public Radio
