Product Description

Guess what? The Indians didn’t save the Pilgrims from starvation by teaching them to grow corn. Thomas Jefferson thought states’ rights—an idea reviled today—were even more important than the Constitution’s checks and balances. The “Wild” West was more peaceful and a lot safer than most modern cities. And the biggest scandal of the Clinton years didn’t involve an intern in a blue dress.

Surprised? Don’t be. In America, where history is riddled with misrepresentations, misunderstandings, and flat-out lies about the people and events that have shaped the nation, there’s the history you know and then there’s the truth.

In 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask, Thomas E. Woods Jr., the New York Times bestselling author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, sets the record straight with a provocative look at the hidden truths about our nation’s history—the ones that have been buried because they’re too politically incorrect to discuss. Woods draws on real scholarship—as opposed to the myths, platitudes, and slogans so many other “history” books are based on—to ask and answer tough questions about American history, including:

- Did the Founding Fathers support immigration?
- Was the Civil War all about slavery?
- Did the Framers really look to the American Indians as the model for the U.S. political system?
- Was the U.S. Constitution meant to be a “living, breathing” document—and does it grant the federal government wide latitude to operateas it pleases?
- Did Bill Clinton actually stop a genocide, as we’re told?

You’d never know it from the history that’s been handed down to us, but the answer to all those questions is no.

Woods’s eye-opening exploration reveals how much has been whitewashed from the historical record, overlooked, and skewed beyond recognition. More informative than your last U.S. history class, 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask will have you wondering just how much about your nation’s past you haven’t been told.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #342255 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-10
• Released on: 2007-07-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Woods (The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History) argues that the history lessons schoolchildren learn are ideologically driven distortions aimed at producing citizens who believe that big government is good and big business is evil. He aims to set the record straight. He says that Americans have been fed propaganda about the origins of Social Security, which is nothing more than a tax. Indeed, Woods thinks nothing good came out of the New Deal, which, far from lifting the U.S. out of the Great Depression, actually prolonged the nation's economic woes. Much of the book touches on issues of race: desegregating public schools hasn't really helped black children; racial discrimination is not the main cause of the gap between blacks' and whites' salaries; and Martin Luther King Jr. was a dangerous radical who sought an immediate, palpable improvement in blacks' material condition, a vision he thought could be achieved by racial quotas and socialism. Blacks, according to Woods, should model themselves not on King, but on an enterprising if oft forgotten 20th-century self-made man, S.B. Fuller. (July 10)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Spread among current events and constitutional law, Woods' 33 questions extend his criticism of liberal viewpoints on American history elaborated in The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History (2004). Ideas that the Constitution is a "living" document, that the New Deal ended the Depression, and that foreign aid alleviates world poverty are some nostrums the author critiques, while others are more populist. Should you heed, for example, historians' rankings of presidents? Perhaps as measurements of the history profession's ideological tilt, avers Woods, who holds that such lists favor big-government presidents and slight little-government types such as Cleveland and Coolidge. Woods is also concerned that the concept of states rights is viewed negatively, so several questions probe its con-law pedigree and the assertion that it, more than slavery, is what the South fought for in the Civil War. Alighting rather disconnectedly on "the biggest unknown scandal of the Clinton years," George Washington Carver's scientific significance, and Social Security, Woods is at least consistent in maintaining that Americans' historical awareness is befogged by myths. Marketed through conservative media, the assertive Woods will generate requests. Taylor, Gilbert

About the Author
Thomas E. Woods jr. is the New York Times bestselling author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History and How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. He holds a B.A. in history from Harvard and an M.A., an M.Phil., and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. A contributing editor of The American Conservative magazine, Woods has received the Templeton Enterprise Award, the O. P. Alford III Prize for Libertarian Scholarship, and an Olive W. Garvey Fellowship from the Independent Institute. He and his family live in Alabama, where he is a fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Customer Reviews

The Skeletons in the American closet
"While the title may suggest a random theme, Woods notes that most of what you have learned in history (or in the media) is toilet paper. Woods ask 33 questions that when answered give the lie to American history and American foreign policy. The questions range from states rights to busing to America's bombing Christian churches on behalf of Muslim sex slavers. The very answering of Woods questions destroys the State's *mythos,* its story of salvation.

Two chapters that stuck out for me: the stuff on Monica's dress is not the biggest scandal of Clinton's presidency. The biggest scandal was Clinton importing thousands of Muslim terrorists from Central Asia, including Osama bin Laden, funding them, and then giving them free ride to kill Christians in Bosnia and Serbia. At your tax dollar expense. The other issue is that Clinton did not stop a genocide in Bosnia. The victims at Srebenica were not innocent women and children for the most part, but rather members of the 28th Bosnian Muslim Army. And while the current official figure is 8,000 deaths, keep in mind the original numbers were well over 500,000. At this point, I wouldn't believe anything the state told me. all in all a good book.

Other Notae Benes:
1) Woods does a good job with the Great Depression, pointing out how FDR made it worse.

2) He does a good job in defining wealth and on how labor unions destroy it.

No big deal
FLas gringas tambien lloran (Ficcionario) (Spanish Edition)

If you know your American history (know, not just what the high school social studies books say), there is no real news in this book.

Get Unindoctrinated. Get the Facts.
Way to go, Mr. Woods! Thanks for a fresh collection and review of forgotten facts. Here's a balanced meal and freedom from the forced feeding of politically correct curriculum.