I gave it the two stars because overall, the book was just ok. It was not bad, just ok. For me at least, some of the material were things I had encountered in other readings. The other reason for the lower rating is that some of the document scans are a bit difficult to read. His commentary on the documents are the best part of the book. You can overall scan the documents as you see fit. Having said that, I think this is a book more people should be reading, especially people who may not be as well informed. Yes, the American government has done various misdeeds over time, and this book lays out a few of them quite well. You get a pretty good range of history from the 60s to the War on Terror. The earlier documents are unclassified items, many of them available online. Some of the newer items include WikiLeaks material, such as the infamous (to many) embassy cables, which often boil down to American diplomats being catty about their counterparts. Fans of Ventura, especially those who liked his tv show, Conspiracy Theory, will like this book. But you do not have to be a conspiracy theorist to appreciate this. Read it...then make your mind up. Book includes a list of websites and sources for you to read further.

Books with similar appeal:

William Blum, Rogue State.
Michael Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon.
Michael Scheuer, Imperial Hubris.
( )

Audiobook. Interesting, but this is not a scholarly work of investigative journalism. Feels tossed off to make money. De-classified documents introduced very briefly by the author. If you haven't read American Conspiracy, read that instead. It is much better. ( )

Jesse provides some interesting information. He provides significant portions of the source documents, which verifies much of the accuracy of the concerns associated with the issues. I must admit that although some of it was interesting, other information was not. It is not surprising to me that over the US government's history that a number of dishonorable to illegal activities have occurred. Consider our beginnings by pushing out the rightful inhabitants of North America. ( )

Unlike in his previous book, American Conspiracies, this time around Ventura actually provides documentation in support of his conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, in most cases his conclusions simply don't follow from the documents he presents, and in some cases are outright contradicted by them.

Also, some of the documents that he seems to think are the most shocking and to which he devotes a lot of space are really pretty tame, unless you're incredibly naive I guess...for instance, he includes a lengthy transcript of a senate committee hearing with an army doctor about the U.S. military's use of biological and chemical agents (including defoliants) during the Vietnam war---and about the worst thing that actually comes out in the interview is that the army accidentally killed a few sheep in Utah (for which they compensated the owners).

He also includes some things that hardly qualify as "documents the government doesn't want you to read"...for instance, the schedule of a conference of free-market advocates, the only really scary thing about which is that Glenn Beck was one of the speakers.

Ventura is also rather inconsistent at times. For instance, in American Conspiracies he argued that we should have state-run healthcare---pointing to, as his shining example, the VA system. "If it's good enough for veterans, it should be good enough for the rest of us," he writes...and yet here, after Obamacare was rammed through the Senate, he provides actual documentation of how inefficient and ineffective the VA really is to show what a raw deal the veterans are getting (the document he provides concludes that "the VA is killing veterans slowly through bureaucratic processes," even driving some to suicide...this is what we have to look forward to under Obamacare, folks!). Nice work, Jesse! You can't have it both ways.

Despite these and other flaws and shortcomings, however, many of the documents presented here are interesting, and some outrageous, in their own right. For that reason, this book is much better than his previous one, and perhaps worth a read. ( )

This book was a really good book in revealing government activity that takes away liberty from the people. I think that we need more books like this, and it is a good reference for specific ways in which our government is getting overgrown. The reason why I only gave this book a three-star rating is because I feel like some of the documents included in the book were not that impressive. There is a lot of evidence out there that shows that the government is infringing on its people, but many of these documents were sometimes poor indicators of that. In other words, there could have been stronger documents included, but for the most part they were good documents.

Concept of the book is amazing, but lacking a little on the details. ( )