Warning: Only read this is you are prepared for just about your entire elementary-middle-high school education shattered.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has taken the history of the United States and told it through its very first residents - the Indigenous nations.

She begins by establishing what life was ...more

I'll keep this simple: if you read this exceptionally researched and beautifully written book and still think the United States is great or has ever been great, you need to take a long hard look in your mirror, then ask your god for forgiveness. ...more

I got this book as a gift from a friend and I feel really grateful. I don't want to say I enjoyed the book per se because I didn't really. It was quite hard reading about all the ugly things we've done as a country to the indigenous people here and everywhere honestly. Most of these things I hadn't ...more

How to explode self-justifying mythologies with evidence. Wow, Dunbar-Ortiz gives an eye-opening narrative of the creation of the United States from the perspective of the peoples displaced by Europeans and their white descendants. In many ways, it's a "Trail of Broken Treaties," but more than that ...more

A rare survey history that I would’ve loved to have been 3x longer. The weaving of history along with the philosophy of historical approach was critical and inspiring ...more

This was a difficult read. The events covered are—of course--brutal, and there is so much to take in about the unimaginable cruelty of the white colonists of the Americas. Every time I read about colonization (which is ongoing), I learn it is somehow is even worse than I previously thought.

This was ...more

REVIEW: United States history as it should be taught. Never too late to learn.

Quote (p. 102): "[James Fenimore Cooper's] positive twist on genocidal colonialism was based on the reality of invasion, squatting, attacking, and colonizing the Indigenous nations."

Quote (p. 109): "[President Andrew] Jack ...more

Such a disappointment. Did the people who gave this book five stars actually read it? Do they like reading? Have they actually read a well-written book before? Or do they just give the book five stars because they like its thesis? I like its thesis too. But this book is miserable. I finished it only ...more