Greed and Exploitation: The Motor of American History
Thematic Claim
Through parody and absurdity, Alexandra Petri’s US History argues that greed and exploitation are not peripheral vices but the central engine driving much of American history. The relentless pursuit of wealth systematically blinds colonizers, industrialists, and ordinary citizens to human suffering, environmental destruction, and ethical reasoning. The book exposes how this pursuit is often disguised as progress, opportunity, or even “exchange,” while its victims are erased, silenced, or recast as willing participants. By twisting familiar historical narratives into comic exaggerations, Petri forces readers to see the ugly consistency beneath the official stories.
Coronado’s Willful Blindness
The second chapter, a fabricated 1541 letter from Francisco de Coronado to King Charles V, provides the purest distillation of greed-fueled self-deception. Coronado eagerly accepts the word of a captured Indigenous man—whom he nicknames El Turco—that a city of gold lies to the east. Each piece of evidence contradicting this fantasy is reinterpreted as confirmation. When El Turco describes a tree of golden bells, Coronado writes it down as fact. When other captives insist there is no gold, Coronado dismisses them as liars hoarding treasure. Most damningly, he treats the Pueblo word acochis as proof of gold, ignoring that the word likely means something else entirely.
The greed here is not just for material riches but for validation—Coronado needs the gold to exist so his expedition is justified. This need leads him to burn hundreds of people alive, ignore warnings about an ambush, and march into dangerous territory. The satirical letter format shows how official documents paper over atrocity with breezy optimism. Coronado signs off “CWTFATG (Can’t Wait to Find All That Gold),” revealing how greed turns violence into a punchline. The chapter demonstrates that exploitation begins with a refusal to see others as human: El Turco is not a person but a source of information, and his people are obstacles to be eliminated.
The Columbian Exchange’s Unequal Bargain
Chapter 3 shifts the focus from individual greed to systemic exploitation. A customer tries to return typhus—a disease that decimated Indigenous populations—to the Columbian Exchange, but the clerk enforces a strict no-returns policy. The customer argues that the potato they traded is vastly superior: portable, nutritious, self-reproducing, and useful for powering a clock. The clerk admits in the fine print that the exchange is “a very shitty exchange.” This skit satirizes the historical reality that the Columbian Exchange transferred valuable crops from the Americas to Europe while delivering deadly Old World diseases to Native peoples.
The greed here is not personal avarice but the structural greed of a system that calls itself an “exchange” while giving one side a catastrophe in return for abundance. The clerk’s refusal to acknowledge the imbalance mirrors how historical narratives downplay Indigenous suffering. Petri’s dialogue form makes the absurdity explicit: no rational person would trade a potato for typhus, yet that is exactly what happened. The scene critiques the exploitation hidden beneath the neutral term “exchange,” exposing how economic language sanitizes violence.
Fairy Tales and American Entitlement
Chapter 73 applies Tom Wolfe’s New Journalism style to four classic fairy tales, revealing greed as the unspoken motive in each. Little Red Riding Hood strays from the path because the flowers are better, ignoring her mother’s warning. Goldilocks invades the bears’ home and eats their porridge “as if it’s her place.” The wolf respects the brick house but blows down the others, admiring only the pig who can defend property. Hansel and Gretel greedily devour a gingerbread house, stuffing their pockets as if it’s the 1980s.
Petri reframes these stories as parables of American consumerism and entitlement. The characters believe they deserve whatever they can take—the woods are there for the grabbing, the porridge is theirs by right, the gingerbread house is the “brass ring.” The narrator explicitly links this behavior to the 1980s ethos of unapologetic consumption. Greed is no longer a vice but the driving force behind American exceptionalism. The chapter satirizes how national myths are built on a foundation of taking without asking, then telling yourself the story is heroic.
Complexity and Contradiction
Petri does not present greed and exploitation as simple villains. The book’s satire also targets those who benefit from exploitation while claiming moral purity. In Chapter 74, a Build-a-Bear marketing team debates how to commemorate 9/11 with a tweet. The boss insists on posting to avoid silence, while Greg urges caution. They settle on a patriotic bear image, but the tweet is deleted after fifteen minutes. This scene critiques corporate exploitation of tragedy—the company is more concerned with being seen than with genuine remembrance. Yet the employees are also trapped by their own desperation to appear appropriate.
Chapter 39’s parody of The Jungle shows how exploitation in the meatpacking industry is so normalized that workers treat injuries and deaths with dark humor. Jurgis’s wife compares childbirth to a meat-production instruction, and his funeral is “small but not lacking in taste.” The satire is brutal, but it also implies that the system exploits everyone—workers, consumers, and even the reformers who later pass the Pure Food and Drug Act, as if a single law could undo the damage.
Even the currency chapter (61) mocks the arbitrary value placed on money. The U.S. Mint designers argue over hat sizes, denominations, and whether to put Thomas Jefferson’s plantation on the nickel. Greed is baked into the very symbols of national identity—the dollar bill’s “creepy lidless eye hovering over a pyramid” is a joke, but it also hints at the conspiratorial greed that people project onto institutions. The chapter suggests that money itself is a fiction we all agree to exploit.
Study Questions and Answers
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How does Coronado’s interpretation of El Turco’s word acochis illustrate the theme of willful ignorance driven by greed?
Coronado insists that acochis means “gold” because any other translation would undermine his quest. When El Turco says “That’s not acochis” about another metal, Coronado takes this as proof that El Turco knows gold. The willful mistranslation allows Coronado to ignore all contradictory evidence, showing how greed warps perception and language. -
In the Columbian Exchange dialogue, why does the clerk refuse to acknowledge the potato is better than typhus?
The clerk hides behind a policy and fine print (“we’re a very shitty exchange”) rather than admit the system is rigged. This mirrors historical denial—Europeans benefited enormously from the exchange of crops while devastating Indigenous populations with disease, but the term “exchange” obscures the imbalance. The clerk’s refusal enforces the exploitation. -
How does the fairy tale chapter reframe greed as a positive force in American mythology?
The chapter links each character’s greed to the “1980s ethos of unapologetic consumption.” Little Red, Goldilocks, the wolf, and Hansel and Gretel all act on a sense of entitlement that the narrator presents as the American way. By making greed the explicit motive, Petri exposes how national myths celebrate taking without permission. -
What does the Build-a-Bear 9/11 tweet scene reveal about exploitation in the present day?
The company is less interested in genuine commemoration than in avoiding silence—the boss says “we can’t be the brand that said nothing.” The tweet is deleted after fifteen minutes, showing that the exploitation is performative. The scene critiques how corporations use tragedy for branding while Greg’s caution is ignored, highlighting the pressure to monetize memory. -
Why does Petri include a chapter on The Jungle (Chapter 39) in a book about U.S. history?
The Jungle is a touchstone of muckraking journalism, but Petri’s parody emphasizes how even reform can be co-opted. The Pure Food and Drug Act is mentioned as a coda, but the satire focuses on the absurdity of treating human suffering as dark comedy. The chapter reminds readers that exploitation is not just historical—it is embedded in labor systems that persist.