"Untold History" Advance Screening

Partner Event

Date: Wednesday, November 7, 2012 - 8:00pm - 10:00pm

Location: Ward Building, Rooms 1 & 2, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20016

How would your views change if you knew the untold stories of history that shaped our politics and society?

Join the College of Arts & Sciences for an advance episode screeing "Untold History of the United States," a ten part documentery series airing on Showtime by Academy award-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone and AU History Professor Peter Kuznick.

What Showtime Says about the Series:
This ten-part documentary series looks back at human events that at the time went under reported, but that crucially shaped America's unique and complex history over the 20th century. From the atomic bombing of Japan to the Cold War and the fall of Communism, this in-depth, surprising, and totally riveting series will hold your attention for all ten episodes.

Watch the Preview: http://www.sho.com/sho/oliver-stones-untold-history-of-the-united-states/home

What Simon and Schuster Says about the Book:
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Martin Sherwin called Untold History "the most important historical narrative of this century."

Mikhail Gorbachev wrote that Stone and Kuznick's "perspective is indispensable at a time when decisions are being taken that will shape America's role in the global world of the twenty-first century."

Multiple Academy Award-winner Oliver Stone (once called Dostoevsky behind a camera) has directed such iconic movies as Platoon, Wall Street, JFK, Natural Born Killers, and W. He’s known for his often controversial point of view and probing exploration of weighty historical and political topics. Now, Stone collaborates with esteemed American University professor Peter Kuznick to present  a history our country that has been unearthed through recently discovered archives and newly declassified material.

Filled with poignant photos and little-known historical facts, this book covers the rise of the American Empire and national security state from the late nineteenth century through the Obama administration, revealing how deeply rooted the seemingly aberrant policies of the Bush-Cheney administration are in the nation’s past and why it has proven so difficult for President Obama to significantly change course.

By discerning patterns that have previously gone unrecognized and examining the most recently released declassified documents, Stone and Kuznick challenge prevailing orthodoxies and ask questions not normally raised. The result is not the kind of history taught in schools or represented on television or in popular movies, and it will come as a surprise to the vast majority of American and global citizens, shocking and astounding both experts and history-lovers alike.

About Peter Kuznick:
Peter Kuznick, Professor of History at American University, is author of Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists As Political Activists in 1930s America (University of Chicago Press), co-author with Akira Kimura of  Rethinking the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Japanese and American Perspectives (Horitsu Bunkasha, 2010), co-author with Yuki Tanaka of Genpatsu to hiroshima — genshiryoku heiwa riyo no shinso (Nuclear Power and Hiroshima: The Truth Behind the Peaceful Use of Nuclear Power (Iwanami, 2011), and co-editor with James Gilbert of Rethinking Cold War Culture (Smithsonian Institution Press). His current projects include a book on scientists and the Vietnam War and another that flows from his recent Journal of Genocide Research article, which looks at how the evolving understanding that nuclear war could lead to annihilation of all life on the planet has shaped the behavior and views of military strategists, policymakers, and the public. In 1995, he founded American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute, which he directs. Every summer, beginning 1995, he takes Institute students on a study-abroad class in Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. He also spearheaded the Committee for a National Discussion of Nuclear History and Current Policy in response to the Smithsonian’s Enola Gay exhibit and co-founded the Nuclear Education Project. He writes often and lectures frequently about nuclear issues and the atomic bombings in particular. Kuznick is currently serving his third three-year term as Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer and regularly provides commentary for U.S. and international media.

About Oliver Stone:
Noted filmmaker Oliver Stone has directed more than 20 movies and won Academy Awards for three of them: Midnight Express, Platoon, and Born on the Fourth of July. A graduate of the film school at New York University, Stone started his career in film as a scriptwriter. In 1978 he won his first Academy Award for his adaptation of the true-life jail tale Midnight Express into a hit film. Stone has written or taken part in writing nearly every film he has directed. Stone’s controversial film JFK helped secure passage of the Assassination Materials Disclosure Act of 1992 and the eventual end to the secrecy surrounding Kennedy's assassination. Stone’s latest work, his collaboration with professor Peter Kuznick of American University on the book and TV series Untold History of the United States,  presents a history that draws on sources overlooked or unavailable in writing the history of the United States most of us are familiar with. Stone described the project as "the most ambitious thing I've ever done.”