[7] The series covers "the reasons behind the Cold War with the Soviet Union, U.S. President Harry Truman's decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan, and changes in America's global role since the fall of Communism.
The series is a reexamination of some of the underreported and darkest parts of American modern history, using little-known documents and newly uncovered archival material.
"[10] The series was personally presented by Stone at the Subversive Festival on May 4, 2013, in Zagreb, Croatia, which next to film screenings also included debates and public lectures by prominent intellectuals such as Slavoj Žižek and Tariq Ali.
[19] The ten-part series is supplemented by a 750-page companion book, The Untold History of the United States, also written by Stone and Kuznick, released on Oct 30, 2012 by Simon & Schuster.
Instead, each episode consists of archival material: stock film, photographs, video and audio recordings, computer generated maps and diagrams, clips from fictional movies, and Stone's voiceover narration.
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev wrote approvingly of the book:Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick provide a critical overview of US foreign policy during the past few decades.
At stake is whether the United States will choose to be the policeman of a "Pax Americana", which is a recipe for disaster, or partner with other nations on the way to a safer, more just and sustainable future.
[25]David Wiegand wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle: "The films are at their best when they provide a panoramic view of our history in the middle part of the 20th century.
It's all weirdly engrossing" but found the content less than provocative: "You keep waiting for a fresh insight, a new twist, a bizarre fact and after a while would even be profoundly grateful for some wacky Stone revisionism.
In November 2012, historian Ronald Radosh of the conservative Hudson Institute lambasted it as "mendacious" Cold War revisionism and "mindless recycling of Stalin's propaganda," claiming similarities to Communist author and NKVD agent Carl Marzani's Soviet-published treatise We Can Be Friends.
This is not to accuse Stone of plagiarism, only to point out that the case he now offers as new was argued in exactly the same terms by an American Communist and Soviet agent in 1952.Journalist Michael C. Moynihan criticized the book for "moral equivalence between the policies of the psychotically brutal Soviet Union and the frequently flawed policy of the United States" and called the title "misleading" in that nothing within the book was "untold" previously.
[30] Wilentz went on to say: Although the book by Stone and Kuznick is heavily footnoted, the sourcing...recalls nothing so much as Dick Cheney’s cherry-picking of intelligence, particularly about the origins and early years of the cold war.
With the input of educators and historians, Stone and Kuznick also designed a curriculum guide for the series and primary source-based lesson plans for each episode.