Rating: 
Summary: Every U.S. citizen should be made to read this book
Review: A brilliantly written account of just one of the CIA/US govt crimes in the world (this one was called Operation Success), this book was so compelling that I couldn't put it down. The US paranoia against the communist threat led to some not very intelligent people, including Eisenhower, to assist in ridding the Western Hemisphere of anything that vaguely resembled a left wing movement, and installing the usual Latin American style, U.S. sponsored despotic dictatorship (also, see Nicaragua, Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, etc). When Arbenz reasoned about the Comunists in his goverment by saying "it's better to have them visible then to have them underground", no one, of course took notice. According to one set of research figures published in the book, the years which followed Arbenz's downfall have seen the death or dissapearance of up to 200,000 people. The authors of this book have done a fantastic job of revealing this part of American history in a very clear and concise manner, and all I can say is that it's a shame that Allen Dulles, the CIA director at the time, and his stoolies never got to be tried in court for the atrocities they were responsible for committing.
Rating: 
Summary: another 'forgotten intervention'
Review: Along with the 'Sandino Affiar' this book is a classic detailing american 'imperialism' in the areas covered by the Monroe Doctrin. This book details the 1954 coup in Guatemala in which a lefitst was overthrown. THis is reminiscent of the 1973 coup in Chili where Allende was overthrown. America has been implicated in both coups, yet their is much more evidence for this one. Guatemla was a hot bed of communists in the 50s, Che Guevara himself was their! The Americans sent down some dirty tricks people, many of whom would alter be employed as 'plumbers' under Nixon(people like Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy). THis is a quick and interesting read. 'Intervention' the story of Americas search for Poncho Villa in Mexico is also an interesting account in this genre.
Rating:
Summary: another 'forgotten intervention'
Review: Along with the 'Sandino Affiar' this book is a classic detailing american 'imperialism' in the areas covered by the Monroe Doctrin. This book details the 1954 coup in Guatemala in which a lefitst was overthrown. THis is reminiscent of the 1973 coup in Chili where Allende was overthrown. America has been implicated in both coups, yet their is much more evidence for this one. Guatemla was a hot bed of communists in the 50s, Che Guevara himself was their! The Americans sent down some dirty tricks people, many of whom would alter be employed as 'plumbers' under Nixon(people like Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy). THis is a quick and interesting read. 'Intervention' the story of Americas search for Poncho Villa in Mexico is also an interesting account in this genre.
Rating:
Summary: How the U.S. overthrew a legitimate government in Guatemala.
Review: First off, the authors are from the liberal establishment, so there view is the U.S.A. was wrong to bring down the government
of Guatemala in 1953-1954. Even though I believe most of the story, they did not write an objective analysis. The U.S. Government viewed the Arbenz government as tolerating
Communists in the McCarthy era, along with nationalizing certain
land held by the United Fruit company based in Boston. These two conflicts resulted in the U.S. government authorizing the overthrow of the Arbenz government and the installation of the
Castillo Armas government. Bitter fruit is a play on words due to the involvement of the United Fruit government. As stated, I think what the U.S. government did was wrong, but I
view this book as not being completely objective. Communists were involved in the government, and Guatemala was like a magnet
to Communists in the 1950s. See Anderson's book on Che Guevarra to note that there were not just a few here. I think the authors overlook this, and view Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers as too concerned for United Fruit. The book was well written and short enough to read in one or two
days. The book did a good job portraying the actors in this drama, along with the environment in which they operated in.
Rating:
Summary: How the U.S. overthrew a legitimate government in Guatemala.
Review: First off, the authors are from the liberal establishment, so there view is the U.S.A. was wrong to bring down the government
of Guatemala in 1953-1954. Even though I believe most of the story, they did not write an objective analysis. The U.S. Government viewed the Arbenz government as tolerating
Communists in the McCarthy era, along with nationalizing certain
land held by the United Fruit company based in Boston. These two conflicts resulted in the U.S. government authorizing the overthrow of the Arbenz government and the installation of the
Castillo Armas government. Bitter fruit is a play on words due to the involvement of the United Fruit government. As stated, I think what the U.S. government did was wrong, but I
view this book as not being completely objective. Communists were involved in the government, and Guatemala was like a magnet
to Communists in the 1950s. See Anderson's book on Che Guevarra to note that there were not just a few here. I think the authors overlook this, and view Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers as too concerned for United Fruit. The book was well written and short enough to read in one or two
days. The book did a good job portraying the actors in this drama, along with the environment in which they operated in.
Rating:
Summary: Fast-paced and balanced account of American foreign policy
Review: I had wanted to read this book ever since reading Mr. Kinzer's account of the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran, entitled "All the Shah's Men," which I would also heartily endorse. Like that book, "Bitter Fruit" is an intricately detailed yet fast-paced account of an American-sponsored overthrow of a popularly-elected foreign leader. Perhaps the most unique aspect of the book is the attention that the authors give to providing biographical sketches of all the participants. These portraits serve to contextualize the situation and render the actors' motives more understandable. As a graduate student in political science, I have been trained to explain political phenomena as functions of identifiable and measurable independent factors. While the parsimony afforded by the academic approach has its advantages, Schlesinger and Kinzer's account reminds us that political reality is shaped by fallibe individuals often guided by imperfect information and their own ideological commitments. Indeed, the most vexing question that came to my mind was how men like the American Ambassador to Guatemaula in '54 and the dogmatic Dulles brothers ever attained positions of such prominence. Their belief that the social reforms being enacted in Guatemala represented the initial stage of a Communist revolution that would spread through all of Latin America seems ludicrous in hindsight, and Schlesinger and Kinzer's account makes clear that the evidence upon which this domino theory rested was shaky to begin with. The role that the "liberal" media played in reproducing the American accusations against Arbenz's government is one of the most interesting aspects of this book. In conclusion, the authors are clearly antagonistic to the neoconservative ideology that justified American intervention around the world in the name of "anti-communism." Advocates of this view will naturally find weaknesses in their account. That said, Schlesinger and Kinzer are not apologists of the Guatemalan revolution of 1944. They devote ample space to detailing the weaknesses of the economic and social reforms enacted in the name of the revolution. All in all, their tone and their evidence permit the reader to form his or her own conclusions regarding the sagacity of America's interference in Guatemala's political and social evolution.
Rating:
Summary: Fast-paced and balanced account of American foreign policy
Review: I had wanted to read this book ever since reading Mr. Kinzer's account of the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran, entitled "All the Shah's Men," which I would also heartily endorse. Like that book, "Bitter Fruit" is an intricately detailed yet fast-paced account of an American-sponsored overthrow of a popularly-elected foreign leader. Perhaps the most unique aspect of the book is the attention that the authors give to providing biographical sketches of all the participants. These portraits serve to contextualize the situation and render the actors' motives more understandable. As a graduate student in political science, I have been trained to explain political phenomena as functions of identifiable and measurable independent factors. While the parsimony afforded by the academic approach has its advantages, Schlesinger and Kinzer's account reminds us that political reality is shaped by fallibe individuals often guided by imperfect information and their own ideological commitments. Indeed, the most vexing question that came to my mind was how men like the American Ambassador to Guatemaula in '54 and the dogmatic Dulles brothers ever attained positions of such prominence. Their belief that the social reforms being enacted in Guatemala represented the initial stage of a Communist revolution that would spread through all of Latin America seems ludicrous in hindsight, and Schlesinger and Kinzer's account makes clear that the evidence upon which this domino theory rested was shaky to begin with. The role that the "liberal" media played in reproducing the American accusations against Arbenz's government is one of the most interesting aspects of this book. In conclusion, the authors are clearly antagonistic to the neoconservative ideology that justified American intervention around the world in the name of "anti-communism." Advocates of this view will naturally find weaknesses in their account. That said, Schlesinger and Kinzer are not apologists of the Guatemalan revolution of 1944. They devote ample space to detailing the weaknesses of the economic and social reforms enacted in the name of the revolution. All in all, their tone and their evidence permit the reader to form his or her own conclusions regarding the sagacity of America's interference in Guatemala's political and social evolution.
Rating:
Summary: More accounts of U.S. terrorism in the world
Review: I'm glad to see yet one more accurate account of how far an almost imperceptible percentage of this country's population is willing to go in the name of their interests. It's really sad that those who should be most interested in this, namely U.S. citizens, turn a blind eye to it. But as it has been proven throughout centuries of history, silent propaganda, coupled with loud lies told by the rest of the press, works really well at keeping the population in a different galaxy. Otherwise, they would not allow these things to happen.
Poor education must have something to do with this phenomenon, as illustrated by the disastrous spelling and grammar in some of the negative reviews coming from U.S. locations above.
Rating:
Summary: an area studies and foreign policy classic..and a good read!
Review: Reading Bitter Fruit several years after the last time was like picking up a great but long neglected novel and discovering its richness all over again. When I first read Bitter Fruit, not long after its initial publication, it was as riveting as any Dick Francis mystery--not my usual reaction to books I had to read for course preparation! The Kinzer-Schlesinger book is one of those rarities--in two sub-disciplines: an area studies and a foreign policy classic. The rigor of the research that undergirds the book is clear from the early pages; the story is compelling;and the moral is timeless. Both as an examination of politics in Guatemala in the early 1950s AND as a study of U.S. foreign policy in that period, the book is almost without peer. As John Coatsworth notes in his introduction, "Now that the Cold War ... has ended, the lessons Bitter Fruit sought to convey are just as relevant [as] they were" when it was written. John Coatsworth's fine Introduction is very useful in placing the book in historical perspective. Particularly for students for whom the Vietnam war is as ancient a history as World War II is for the authors and me, and for whom the Cold War is primarily memories of people breaking down the Berlin Wall with hammers, Coatsworth's introduction reminds the reader that history CAN repeat itself--if under different guises. As Walter Lefeber (whom Coatsworth cites) argues in Inevitable Revolutions, the U.S. goal in Central America from the nineteenth century forward was control of the region; only the rationale changed from era to era. This introduction reminds us of that reality; my only comment in this context is that the latest means of control is (as it was for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) economic--this time neo- liberal economic policies. Kinzer's Afterword is an appropriate and useful reflection on Guatemala in recent years. Reading Coatsworth and Kinzer together was a good exercise; the two essays are excellent "bookends" for the original manuscript. Tommie Sue Montgomery, Ph.D.
Rating:
Summary: Destroying democracy under the charade of anti-Communism
Review: Schlesinger's and Kinzer's classic study examines one of the more disgraceful chapters in the history of American foreign policy: the CIA-sponsored overthrow in 1954 of the democratically elected government of Guatemala. The long-term repercussions of this unprovoked excursion are still felt today; many Latin American countries still do not trust United States intentions because of our actions in both Guatemala and, two decades later, Chile. "Bitter Fruit" explodes some cherished myths that apologists for the coup have proffered over the years. First, it's clear that Roosevelt rather than Stalin provided the inspiration to the presidencies of Juan Jose Arevalo (1945-1951) and Jacobo Arbenz Guzman (1951-1954). Both Arevalo and Arbenz were motivated by the policies and practices of the New Deal; their support for labor and their actions towards American businesses must be viewed in this light and were never any worse than the laws passed during the Depression in the United States. Regardless of whatever tolerance Guatemalan Communists may have enjoyed, or influence they may have had--and it's clear that they didn't have much--the Eisenhower administration was motivated as much by scorn of the Roosevelt and Truman years as by anti-Communism. (Tellingly, those who cite Che Guevera's presence in Guatemala often fail to note that his arrival, at the age of 25 in early 1954, postdated the planning of American intervention and predated by many years Guevera's notoriety.) Second, the succession of American puppets who succeeded Arbenz were certainly not supported by the people of Guatemala: the ragtag opposition "army" never exceeded 400 troops in number, and none of the dictators during the next four decades could have survived a freely held election. Between 1954 and the early 1990s, tens of thousands of civilians were imprisoned, executed, or "disappeared" at the fleeting whims of a series of brutal tyrants--and this, to most Central Americans, is the "bottom line" legacy of American interference. Third, some defend American intervention because the Guatemalan land reforms in the early 1950s "stole" property from the United Fruit Company. What the supporters of the company's property rights rarely acknowledge is that one of the company's early founders, Samuel Zemurray, acquired its land, as well as a railroad monopoly, by organizing from New Orleans a coup in 1905 that overthrew the existing government and installing UFC's own puppet--all in violation of American law. In addition, when the Arbenz government attempted to compensate UFC for the land (all of it fallow), the company admitted that it had fraudulently undervalued their holdings for tax purposes at $627,000; the land was worth closer to $16 million. And, finally, what is clear from Schlesinger's and Kinzer's account is that the Americans behind the 1954 coup, from Ambassador John Peurifoy to the Dulles brothers to Eisenhower himself, knew that what they were doing was indefensible. In order to "sell" the coup at all they had to invent a propagandistic war against a democratically elected government to a gullible American media. Not surprisingly, they covered up and denied American involvement not only at the time but during the ensuing years. Furthermore, many of the participants who survived into the late 1970s either confessed their regret to the authors of this book or admitted that the horrific long-term consequences of the coup in no way justified its short-term "success." The American adventure in Guatemala was fostered by bad intelligence, furthered by greedy intentions, and executed with no coherent strategy, and it dealt a serious blow both to democracy and to the immediate and long-term interests of the United States government. Meticulously documented, this blood-boiling yet even-handed study should be read by all who are concerned by the consequences of ill-conceived, unilaterally executed, and short-sighted foreign policy planning.
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