Rating: 
Summary: Strips the Empires Bare
Review: This book is a great read if you want a solid background to Western involvement in Iran and how oil has guided imperialism since the early 20th century. It shines a not-so-favorable light on some big political names(Churchhill, Eisenhower, the Dulles brothers) and provides insight to shortsighted foreign policy. The domino effect of decisions made by the political players and western oil are clearly laid bare. Anyone truly interested in the current Middle East situation should have this book on their short list. There is a lot of food for thought here.
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Summary: Very Important History - US Destabilization of Middle East
Review: I was given this book by a relative who had heard an interview of the author. Having lived through the Iran Hostage Crisis in my late teens, and Iran-Contra later, I assumed I understood that country well. This book really pinpointed my naivete' regarding my trust of US Govt policy and our intelligence services. The book is a quick read (I finished in 3 nights, while getting my kids to fall asleep), and it appears well supported by fact. It is enlightening to learn new perspectives on the motivations of Winston Churchill, British Petroleum, Harry Truman and Eisenhower on their decision making and competing interests with regard to Iran. These participants apparently conspired to destroy a young, vibrant democracy in Iran in 1953 whose chief result was the fostering of distrust and islamic extremism in the region that has led to our current tragic state of affairs. This is an important read, especially now that we have become more embroiled in middle east politics. It is essential that all americans understanding how destabilizing our administration's actions can be to a region. I highly recommend this work.
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Summary: Iran could have never become communist anyway!
Review: All of those people who justify the CIA intervention in Iran in 1953, based on the fear of communism obviously don't know anything about Iran, its history and its psychology. They don't know the makeup of an ordinary Iranian mind. Iranians are deeply religious and immensely proud of their heritage. The only country where while under the rules of Arabs and Mongols still kept their native language intact was Iran. Around 1500 A.D, during the Safavid era, Iranians in order to further "Persianize" their religious faith; they chose the minority Shiat branch of Islam. Anyone who has ever seen, the mourning period observed in Iran for the third Imam of Shiat's can sense the depth of the Iranians' religious feelings. Another very important aspect of the Iranian social mind is their love for wealth and luxury. Where else in the world would one find the most magnificent carpets other than Iran? Taj Mahal is a breath-taking monument, isn't it? Did you know that in style it is Persian from the Safavid era and many Persian artisans were in the file and rank during the building of the monument? Did you know that silk taffeta which is categorized by many, as the most luxurious fabric was a Persian invention? The list goes on and on. If you have ever been invited to any Iranian households especially inside of Iran, you would know that the occupants have tried relentlessly to make their surroundings look richer beyond their means. In a place where the right of owning property has existed equally among men and women for thousands of years and is valued very highly, no communist government which takes such a right away could last a single day. For Iranians leaving under the scarcity and hardship of a communist regime is a fate worse than death. Leaving under the economic conditions brought on by the current government is hard enough for Iranians. By all accounts and based on all the talks I've had with people who actually lived in the Soviet Union, the current living standards in Iran is by far better than anything that the Soviet Union style of government could have provided. Mossadegh was a nationalist whose idol was Gandhi. Mossadegh deeply believed in democratic values. His overturn was a big below to Iranian's aspirations for freedom from which the Iranian nation has still not recovered. In my opinion, the western governments have utterly failed to understand Iranians. As a result, the policies that they have pursued towards Iran have all backfired. At the same time getting to know Iranians is not very hard at all. In dealing with Iranians, you have to remember that they remember and feel every ups and downs of their history throughout the ages up until today. One reason is that their classic poetry, which up until today, is still enjoyed among the masses, keeps reminding them of who they are and what has happened to them throughout the history. Any government including any Iranian government cannot and should not treat a nation as deep and as philosophical of the Iranian nation with arrogance and ignorance. If they do, their treatment will be reflected back to them like reflections coming off of a mirror. The revolution of 1979 was a reflection and the current desire for nuclear weapons is another reflection. It might not be the right reflection or one that we like, but it is a reflection. Regarding the nuclear weapons, you can talk to reformists, hardliners, dissidents, and even the so-called "restless youth" in Iran and they'll ask you, "if others could have it, why couldn't we?" Regardless of the reasons why they should or shouldn't have nuclear technology, it goes back to show you the common thread in the psyche of Iranians: their pride in who they are and their desire not to be less than anyone else. Interestingly enough, the same national characteristic such as deep rooted religious feelings, love of luxury, the desire for excellence and pride in who they are is seen in the American nation. So of all people, Americans and Iranians should understand each other very well was it not for the fact that their respective governments keep stereotyping and name-calling each other instead of trying to understand the common national psyche and characteristic shared by the Iranians and Americans alike.
Rating: 
Summary: Fast Paced History That Reads Like a Spy Novel
Review: This is an important book, but not an overly academic one. It tells of how the British and American governments have worked for most of this century to direct Iranian politics from afar. The main goal of this meddling from the British colonizers was always about the OIL, naturally. Later, they enlisted help from the Americans after WWII by suggesting that Iran could turn Communist if left untended. Thus the CIA took over, and using longtime British espionage contacts, overthrew the nationalistic leader of Iran: Mossedegh. This book is exactly the type of history that many Americans need right now. It's not "anti-American" to want to know more about U.S. foreign policy, specifically in relation to the Middle East.
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Summary: Dramatic accout of important events
Review: I found this to be an excellent accounting of a seminal event in U.S. relations with the Islamic world. New, significant documents about the 1953 British/U.S. overthrow of the elected Iranian Prime Minister (Mohammed Mossadegh) have been made public recently. Stephen Kinzer utilizes these in weaving together a powerful, accessible history of why and how it happened. While the British -- represented by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now British Petroleum) -- come off as the real villains in this account, the CIA role is paramount. The prime mover for the agency is Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Teddy. Kinzer paints an interesting portrait of Roosevelt, who emerges as a man dedicated to his mission, but with little care for its geopolitical underpinnings. Following his success in reinstalling the Shah in power, Roosevelt returns to Washington. There he advises the newly-elected Eisenhower administration that the Iranian coup should not be used as a model for continuing U.S.-initiated "regime change". His advice is, of course, ignored. Kinzer obviously feels great admiration for Prime Minister Mossadegh. Even so, his portrayal is a nuanced one, and he sees Mossadegh as sharing a good portion of the blame for how events transpired. Kinzer does not shy from showing how U.S. involvement in the coup initiated a series of actions that have seriously damaged both Iran and the U.S. Nonetheless, his slant is not an ideological one. Not until the epilogue does his attitude towards Mossadegh verge on hero-worship. The book would have been better-served without this hagiographical addition. All in all, I believe readers will appreciate Kinzers's historical context, his gripping account of the events themselves, and the crisp summary of how they have affected the world since.
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Summary: Next time some one says Israel is the only democracy ...
Review: After reading this book, when next time someone says Israel is the only democracy in South West Asia, implying that people of the region do not or can not value freedom and democracy you would know why. We killed the only indigenous democracy back in 1953. The coup is part of the history, but another important fact pointed out by the author is true to date and should be a major national security concern to every US citizen. As smart as we think our government is, it is constantly and successfully being manipulated to act in the interest of foreign governments and enterprises. Next time you hear the representative of a foreign government claiming "we share common values", watch out.
Rating:
Summary: Job Well Done.
Review: Mr Kinzer has done a great job of writing a book that describes the events surronding the coup. While it would have been nice to have a deeper analysis of the events from today's perspective I can understand that it would have all been speculation. No one knows what lead to what. However, in Mr Kinzer's book it is clear that greed destroyed the dream of democracy and self determination.
I have read many books on Iranian history and have researched the coup in depth, I noticed that Mr Kinzer had used some of the same resources and that was reassuring. As I read his book I was happy with his historical facts.
An excellent book for today's world leaders as they deal with the huge humber of problems we have in the world.
Well done Mr. Kinzer.
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Summary: A history of the 1953 Iranian coup.
Review: I like Kinzer as an author. I have read his Turkey and Guatemala books, and found them to be objective. This book about the 1953 Iranian coup is also an enjoyable read. Kinzer tries to show both the Iranian, British, and American positions and what the result was. The summation jumps to conclusions when it states this coup as the reason for the terrorism in today's Middle East. The coup certainly fueled the terrorism, but it is not the total reason as other factors play into this. Kinzer does to this coup, what he and another author wrote about the 1954 Guatemala coup (Bitter Fruit). Corporate interests along with those of the British brought the CIA into overthrowing a legitimate government. Who were those corporate interests--the Anglo Iranian Oil Company, better known today as British Petroleum. Anglo Iranian poorly treated the Iranian workers and gave little of the profit to the Iranian government. They actually argued that Iran's oil was the property of their company. What arrogance? The Eisenhower administration defends the British and overthrows Mossadegh because of this. This is a good read. The reader should draw his own conclusions about today's Middle East.
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Summary: As Thrilling to Read as it is Illuminating
Review: "All the Shah's Men" is a wonderfully constructed account of America's fateful decision to back Britain and it's principle Iranian oil interests by overthrowing Iran's popular, democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953. Based on his extensive research into a variety of Iranian and American sources including now declassified CIA documents, veteran New York Times journalist, Stephen Kinzer, has produced a historical analysis that reads like a spy thriller. In addition to focusing on the fascinating details of the American-sponsored coup itself, Kinzer provides a vivid and objective portrait of the principle players including the coup's colorful mastermind, CIA operative, Kermit Roosevelt, Iran's enormously popular and passionately nationalistic Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and a host of other individuals ranging from world leaders to the shadowy organizers of street mobs in Iran. Much to his credit, Kinzer examines an understandably controversial subject without employing a predictably judgmental perspective. For example, while Kinzer displays tremendous sympathy toward Mossadegh, he avoids characterizing him as completely virtuous, and competent leader who was overthrown by a rapacious world power. In many ways Mossadegh was a virtuous leader, and his decision to nationalize the deeply oppressive and intractable Anglo/Iranian Oil Company not only earned him tremendous popularity in Iran, but also generated tremendous sympathy in the anti-colonial Truman Administration (which invited him to the United States) and even within the conservative Eisenhower Administration, albeit to a lesser extent. But as just as Mossadegh's grievances against Britain may have been, Kinzer demonstrates that he lacked the shrewdness and the practicality to negotiate with Britain when he had the upper hand. While it was probably impossible for Mossadegh to fully understand the increasingly binary nature of America's global rivalry with the Soviet Union, and how the American government would come to view him in this context, one can't help but wonder how a more skilled and ruthlessly practical politician such as Ghandi or Ho Chi Minh would have handled the situation. Kinzer concludes that while Mossadegh was undoubtedly the victim of an American-sponsored coup, his own understandable, but deeply impractical political passions were partly to blame. Equally fascinating is the lens that Kinzer turns on the American leadership and on its gradual shift from sympathizing with Mossadegh to ultimately backing the British in their quest to regain control of their Iranian oil concessions. In part this resulted from changing political fortunes on both sides of the Atlantic. In roughly the same time frame Attlee's Labor Government in Britain, and the Democratic Truman Administration in America-both of which were largely sympathetic to Mossadegh-were replaced by the more deeply reactionary administrations of Churchill and Eisenhower. Churchill saw himself as the last bastion of the remaining British Empire, and Eisenhower had campaigned on a strong anti-Communist platform. In this context neither leader was willing to tolerate a nationalistic leader of Mossadegh's calibur in Iran. Despite its role in overthrowing the elected leader of a sovereign nation, the American government emerges from these pages in a surprisingly sympathetic manner by at first attempting to work with Mossadegh and then reluctantly helping the British to overthrow him. It is perhaps the British with their hidebound arrogance and total dismissal of Iranian interests who come across as the book's only villains. Finally there is the planning and execution of the coup itself, by CIA operative, Kermit Roosevelt. This part of the story contains so many fascinating and unbelievable twists that it even prompted President Eisenhower to compare it to a dime store novel after Roosevelt provided him with a subsequent intelligence briefing on the subject. One could argue that the Iranian coup formed the blueprint for so many subsequent right-wing coups in places like Nicaragua (1955), Vietnam (1963), Brazil (1964), Chile, (1973), Florida (2000), Venezuela (2002--which actually failed) and Haiti (2004). In most cases, the process of overthrowing a democratically elected government involved a strong man to replace the deposed leader, organizing and dispatching violent mobs to create chaos and to provide the veneer of popular rage toward the existing government, control and skillful application of the mass-media, at least minimal military and police cooperation, and some sort of legal or judicial process to vilify the outgoing leadership and legitimize the new one. Roosevelt skillfully assembled and deployed these elements in deposing Mossadegh and replacing his government with that of the deeply repressive Mohammad Reza Shah. Kinzer concludes his book with some practical questions and hypothetical examinations of other possible outcomes. Could Mossadegh have avoided the coup if he had been more flexible? Would America's long-term foreign policy aims have been better served by backing Mossadegh and by standing for democracy in practice as well as in rhetoric? Was the coup really necessary to counter the perceived Soviet threat? How might subsequent American foreign policy have differed if the coup actually failed, which it very nearly did? In examining these issues, Kinzer come to two sobering conclusions. First, he observes that having easily overturned an undesirable government in one country, American foreign policy makers, most notably the Dulles brothers, believed that "regime change", as we now call it, was a simple and practical approach to implementing America's global security requirements in potentially troubled regions. Kinzer also concludes that seemingly inexplicable events such as the humiliating American Hostage Crisis in 1979 and many subsequent terrorist attacks have origins in the coup that overthrew Mossadegh. Kinzer does not frame his conclusions in a manner that blames America or justifies terrorism. Instead, he provides a rational explanation of cause and effect and suggests that the blowback from the Iranian experience should be considered when making similar policy decisions.
Rating: 
Summary: More than just facts
Review: This book was recommended by a freind and I found it to be an engaing and exciting read. The facts surrounding the events are presneted in somewhat of a US-biased slant. After all CIA admitted having overthrown Mosadeq, so what's new is to make it look as good as it can be! US is discussed as having been pursuaded and even pressured by the British to run the operation to overthrow a popularly elected democratic regime. We find ourselves in an era after the WWII and in the thick of establishing who is the dominant world power. Perhaps the US had some more sophisticated motive than being a servant of Churchil's will.
Regardless, there is plenty for the reader to chew on and contemplate. What is undisputed is the US/British role in destroying democracy in Iran and setting up the stage for the religious klan to destroy its national identity and set-up a long term servitude of this nation.
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