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The Greatest Story Never Told

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This book reads like fiction. Unfortunately, it is all meticulously documented fact. For all who are interested in U.S. post-WW II history, it is essential reading. Actually, it is essential reading for all Americans, because it reveals the seamy underside of U.S. foreign policy, all the news that ISN'T fit to print in the New York Times or report on the Jim Lehrer News Hour. After a brief introduction, the book is separated into decades. Unlike conventional histories, which tend to be dry accounts full of names of places and people and dates and statistics, this presents events in a manner akin to a snapshot: each entry is headed by a year, followed by a location and a headline. The author then places us in a scene and describes it using vivid, dramatic language. Typical entries run from a single paragraph to one page in length, so one can't get bogged down. Joel Kovel's quote on the back cover is apropos, particularly in this post-9/11 era which is aleady disturbingly reminiscent of the hysteria of the McCarthy witchhunts of the 1950s, a subject documented in the book: "We are continually told of how benign and well-meaning America is. This notion is not shared by the rest of the world, but it provides an effective shield against coming to grips with the realities of empire. Happily, there are people like Michael Smith to disabuse us of the illusion of innocence. His fierce compendium of the misdeeds our leaders would have us forget is an indispensable guide to a history that is perpetually suppressed but must not be forgotten." ...

"The Greatest Story Never Told" is a bold, provocative slash through the history of our country, a lively, uncompromising narrative which is a refreshing antidote to the self-congratulation so often found in Americans writing about the United States.
----Howard Zinn, Author, "A People's History of the United States"

An excellent compilation of events which the media rarely reminds us of, and which young Americans have scarcely heard of.
------William Blum, Author, Killing Hope and Rogue State

We are continually told of how benign and well-meaning America is. This notion is not shared by the rest of the world, but it provides an effective shield against coming to grips with the realities of empire. Happily, there are people like Michael Smith to disabuse us of the illusion of innocence. His fierce compendium of the misdeeds our leaders would have us forget is an indispensable guide to a history that is perpetually suppressed but must not be forgotten."
----Joel Kovel, Professor of Social Studies, Bard College

The Greatest Story Never Told: A People's History of the American Empire, 1945-1999 by Michael K. Smith provides hundreds of historical snapshots that you will not find in you local paper. Smith takes a decade-by-decade approach from the end of WWII to the people's victory in Seattle when the World Trade Organization was shut down. Smith focuses on political, social and environmental issues in the U.S. from a progressive prospective. Michael Smith provides a people's prospective reminiscent of Howard Zinn's The People's History, yet with a sometimes sobering sprinkling of Noam Chomsky's analysis. Here's a sample from page 442:

1999: Washington
Portrait of a Clinton Ritual

1993-"I am asking the United State Congress to pass a real campaign reform bill this year." (Cheers)
1994-"I also must now call on you to (pass) tough and meaningful campaign finance reform and lobby reform legislation this year." (Cheers)
1995-"We should also curb the role of big money in elections....this year, let's give the folks at home something to cheer about." (Cheers)
1996-"Now I challenge Congress to go further-to curb special interest influence in politics by passing the first truly bipartisan campaign reform bill in a generation." (Cheers)
1997-"Let's work together to write bipartisan campaign finance reform into law...by the day we celebrate the birth of our democracy-July the fourth." (Cheers)
1998-"I ask you to strengthen our democracy and pass campaign finance reform this year." (Cheers)
1999-"Now we must w3ork to renew our national community as well for the twenty-first century...(by passing) the bipartisan campaign finance reform legislation." (Cheers)

A well-documented historical compilation of short news items you won't find in the "news." Check it out.

This is a realistic appraisal of recent US history, rejecting the idealist illusions that block understanding of reality. Using sources like I. F. Stone, Chomsky, Herman, Parenti, Solomon and Zinn, Smith shows a brutal ruling class that commits crimes at home and abroad in the name of anti-communism. He details the US state's appalling assaults on other countries, from Hiroshima to Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq and Yugoslavia.

In 1990, US ambassador Glaspie tells Saddam Hussein, "we have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait." Bush then double-crosses Iraq by invading. US forces drop fifteen times more explosives on Iraq than it had used in all World War Two. When asked how many Iraqis had been killed, Colin Powell, the liberals' hero, replies, "It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in." He also says that the US invasion of Somalia was `great public relations'.

The head of the US Information Agency tells a reporter, "the vipers, the bloodsuckers, the middlemen - that's what needs to be rehabilitated in the Soviet Union. That's what makes our kind of country click!"

Smith writes of the USA in 1995, "Profits zoom capital swells, stocks boom, assets consolidate, accident rates and labor hours rise; wages, benefits, and working conditions decline. The Wall Street Journal announces that corporate profits are up `an enormous 41%' over 1993, a `colossal success' resulting from a `sharp' decline in the `share going to labor'."

The USA is the only industrial nation without a health plan. Consequently 100,000 people a year die from lack of access to treatment. Smith tells how Clinton, so fawned over by last year's Labour Party Conference, ends federal income support for low-paid workers, plunging millions more children into poverty, a step no Republican President ever dared to take. Just like Blair, wrecking the NHS, the Tube, the fire and rail services, in ways that even Thatcher did not dare.

The cheap response is to decry any criticism as `anti-American'. But it is no more anti-American to oppose the US state than it is anti-British to oppose Thatcher or Blair.

Smith's historical survey of U.S. foreign and domestic policy post-WWII is a must read. His lucid writing, thorough chronology and partiality towards justice will envelope readers seeking to make sense of our politically troubled world. Divided into decades, the book chronicles the misdeeds done by the world's superpower in small capsules making it appealing to even the non-historian or nominally politically inclined. "Greatest Story" should be required reading for all college and high school U.S. history survey courses.