All The Shah's Men: An American Coup And The Roots Of Middle East Terror

With breezy storytelling and diligent research, Kinzer has reconstructed the CIAs 1953 overthrow of the elected leader of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, who was wildly popular at home for having nationalized his country's oil industry. The coup ushered in the long and brutal dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah, widely seen as a U.S. puppet and himself overthrown by the Islamic revolution of 1979. At its best this work reads like a spy novel, with code names and informants, midnight meetings with the monarch and a last-minute plot twist when the CIAs plan, called Operation Ajax, nearly goes awry.

A veteran New York Times foreign correspondent, Kinzer has combed memoirs, academic works, government documents and news stories to produce this blow-by-blow account.