33 Questions about American History You're Not Supposed to Ask

by Thomas E. Woods Jr.

Book Overview

The New York Times bestselling author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History offers answers to the questions about American history many are afraid to ask.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307346684
• ISBN13: 9780307346681
• Release Date: July 2007
• Publisher: Crown Forum
• Length: 306 Pages
• Weight: 1.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

History revised and now clarified

Thomas E Woods has shed light on many history topics that history books have revised for a variety of reasons. I was particularly interested on his clarification of the federal government's limited role on the constitution and how it has gone counter to it by growing to a monstrous level and in the process thwarting the role of the state. Also, the role that wars have played in the ever increasing size of the federal government was fascinating. The view of the Founding Fathers on immigration and the scandal of the Balkans were informative issues that are covered in the book as well. Overall it was an enjoyable read. Enjoy!

Piercing the veil of "Conventional Wisdom"

Mark Twain famously said that the problem isn't what people don't know, but what they know that just ain't so. Tom Woods' new book explodes much of the Received Wisdom about the American past. It does this in an engaging, interesting, surprising way. Has Al Gore persuaded you that American Indians, prior to the arrival of Europeans in America, were 1970s environmentalists? Woods' chapter on this question will disabuse you of this error. Do you think that the New Deal, the enormous expansion of government intervention in the economy, ended the Depression? Do you think, in other words, that the problem with 20th-century Eastern Europe wasn't socialism itself, but that the Communists just weren't as good at it as New Deal Democrats? Woods explodes this (very common) fallacy. Do you have the feeling that the reason the average American of today is comfortable to an extent that Charlemagne would have envied is that the U.S. Government and trade unions have made him that way? Woods begs to differ. Woods takes up 33 commonly accepted notions about the American past (and present) and shows that they absolutely "ain't so." What FUN it is to read one of his little essays, each of which is about 7 pages long, and leave with a completely new understanding of a really important aspect of the past. This is a wonderful book!

More Politically Incorrect History

Prof. Thomas Woods has written another excellent book addressing some of the questions and issues in American history that are ignored or misrepresented by contemporary historians. As just one example, Prof. Woods asks why anyone should care about the various polls of historians ranking presidents. It shouldn't come as a surprise that presidents who expand the scope of government and get the U.S. involved in wars are generally ranked higher than those who don't (for some reason I expect that the current president will be an exception). Prof. Woods also discusses Martin Luther King. For some reason, King is praised by conservatives and neoconservatives, yet his politics were (even by today's standards) far left. In fact, he supported quotas and reparations, although his rhetoric was often admirably "color blind." Perhaps most timely is question 1, which concerns the Founding Fathers' view of immigration. The Founders assumed the basic right of the new nation to restrict immigration and certainly didn't think that "open borders" (or anything close to it) were necessary for the nation to flourish. This book is well documented, well written, and makes an excellent companion to Prof. Woods' bestselling THE POLITICALLY INCORRECT GUIDE TO AMERICAN HISTORY.

Whoa Mama!

33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask is a wonderful book through and through. It should upset every public educator that picks it up. The separation between what's taught in our public schools and what Woods maintains is true is absolutely stunning. Cutting a swath through topics about the pilgrims, discrimination, race relations, law, the constitution, labor unions, and even Bill Clinton, 33 Questions is a lesson in civics and history. What's really scary is that Woods backs up what he writes with sound research and "reasoned reason." I'd be hard put to pick the most important chapter but I do have a favorite or three. Chapter One, "Did the Founding Fathers Support Immigration?" is an eye opener. Perhaps the most stinging chapter is chapter 3; "Were the American Indians Really Environmentalist?" is the most surprising. According to Woods the native Americans used fire to bend the environment to their purpose. Quoting Woods..." Some indian fires, spreading for weeks at a time over several hundred thousand square miles, utterly destroyed plant and animal life. Grassland fires in the northern plains, for instance, did substantial damage to the buffalo population..." This is certain to raise eyebrows among the environmentalists who insist upon holding the native Americans as the ultimate caretakers of the natural world. I could go on but the fact is that each chapter is interesting and will absolutely cause debate among all who read. 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed To Ask is a book that has been needed for a long time. Whether you agree with all the information that is included isn't important. What is important is that there seems to be another side to many of our most dearly held beliefs. In other words, PC history may not be the history we should believe in. Enjoy the read.

Question 34: What if he's right?

As historian Thomas E. Woods, Jr., notes on page 78 of this important new book, "the modern state trains its citizens to think" in a certain way. Whether the issue is the role of the State in regulating the economy ... how racial minorities can succeed ... or how we should judge success or failure in a politician, a narrow range of opinions has been deemed acceptable by Establishment Left and Establishment Right. Questions that could lead to different conclusions are ones "we're not supposed to ask." Tom Woods is out to change that. Picking up where he left off in "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History," the author again plays Manolete to the Establishment's sacred cows. But he's after more, I think, than just a tasty barbecue. Some of the questions here are ones people are actively discouraged from answering the "wrong" way -- questions about the causes of the Civil War, the influence of unions, the effectiveness of desegregation as a tool for improving education, or the validity of PC mythology about native Americans. Other questions confront conventional wisdom so solidly entrenched that the questions don't occur to most people in the first place: what if the Depression wasn't a failure of capitalism, and what if the New Deal didn't save us? But the most interesting questions, I think, are the ones you have to look deeply into American history even to discover the context of the questions, so thoroughly have they been buried under official neglect: Why does the Whiskey Rebellion matter; what does the "elastic clause" really mean; or what if the presidency wasn't meant to be what it is today? At first, I found parts of this book problematic: the chapters are long enough to intrigue (or outrage), but often not long enough to convince beyond the traditional "reasonable doubt." At a few points, the author stopped just short of diving into some Hoppean or Spoonerian analysis of constitutional issues. And yet, entire books have been written on most of these questions -- many of which Woods cites in his text and endnotes. I suspect the author's deeper goal (beyond the above-mentioned barbecue) is less to provide the answers than to urge readers to begin pondering the questions. If rescuing the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions or the true meaning of "states' rights" from the Memory Hole are "essential to a proper understanding of American history" (p. 157), intellectually honest people should be able to work out the implications. Another objection I can see is the so-called "realist" argument that whether or not we ask these questions, the expansion of federal power is a fait accompli --- one the American people by and large seem content with. (The author himself gives us political science in one lesson on page 202: "Enforcing federal supremacy always comes first.") Given that "we" seem to want Social Security, OSHA, and a "national drug control policy," what does it matter what James Madison intended by the commerce clause two cent