Synopsis

The United States of Amnesia is a work of narrative nonfiction that explores the American experience through the stories history chose to forget.

Rather than recounting history through presidents, generals, and political movements, the book tells the American story through the voices of ordinary men and women whose courage, suffering, sacrifice, and resilience helped shape the nation but rarely found a lasting place in its collective memory. Told through eighty first-person testimonies spanning more than four centuries, each chapter pairs opposing voices-victim and witness, oppressor and dissenter, idealist and pragmatist-to illuminate not only what happened, but why those events continue to shape America today.

From the nation's founding to the present day, The United States of Amnesia explores race, immigration, religious freedom, women's rights, labor, war, justice, and democracy-not as isolated episodes, but as chapters in an ongoing struggle to fulfill the promise of the American experiment.

The book is neither an indictment of America nor a celebration of it. It is an invitation to remember it.

Through meticulously researched historical narratives and first-person testimony drawn from or carefully shaped by documented events, the book argues that democracies cannot preserve what they choose to forget. Forgotten history does not disappear; it returns, often disguised as today's crisis.

Ultimately, The United States of Amnesia is about memory, conscience, and redemption. It asks readers to confront America's deepest contradictions alongside its greatest acts of courage, suggesting that the nation's true strength lies not in the myth of perfection, but in its enduring capacity for honesty, self-examination, and renewal.

Methodology / Sourcing Note

The United States of Amnesia is grounded in documented historical events and supported by an extensive bibliography. Many of the first-person voices are drawn directly from letters, diaries, speeches, memoirs, testimony, court records, newspaper accounts, and other historical documents. Where no complete first-person account exists, the narrative voice has been carefully shaped from documented evidence to remain faithful to the historical record.

Why This Book. Why Now

"I did not write this book because I wanted to. I wrote it because I had to." - Jonas McCord

America has always struggled with its past. But today, that struggle has become something larger.

Across the country, the stories we tell about ourselves-what belongs in classrooms, museums, public memorials, and national conversations-have become subjects of intense debate. History itself has become part of the culture war.

The United States of Amnesia enters that conversation from a different direction.

It is not written to condemn America. Nor is it written to celebrate America uncritically.

It asks a simpler question:

What happens to a democracy when it begins to forget the people who paid the price for making it better?

Through eighty first-person historical testimonies, the book gives voice not only to those who suffered injustice, but also to the men and women who risked everything to confront it. Every story of darkness is paired with a story of courage. Every wound is paired with someone who chose to stand against it.

The result is not a political argument. It is a human one.

The book's central premise is simple:

A nation cannot become what it was meant to be by forgetting how it became what it is.

The foreword says it best:

"I wrote this because I am tired of pretending we are better than we are. And I still believe we can be. But not without remembering what we have done."