Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Kinzer gives a good and quick introduction to Iranian history and its relationships with America and Britain. He draws an admittedly tenuous line from the military coup to the 1979 Iranian revolution and then to the 9/11 attacks. That’s the narrative framework, and one of its strengths is to show how covert and overt interventions against democratically elected leaders has turned opinion in the Middle East against America.
All The Shah’s Men.
This is by a former correspondent for the New York Times who focuses on the 1953 CIA-backed coup that removed the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, and replaced him with the Shah. This was at the behest of the British because Mosaddegh had nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. What he does in this book is give a good and quick introduction to Iranian history and its relationships with America and Britain. He draws an admittedly tenuous line from the 1953 coup to the 1979 Iranian revolution and then to the 9/11 attacks. That’s the narrative framework, and one of its strengths is to show how covert and overt interventions against democratically elected leaders has turned opinion in the Middle East against America. It’s written for a Western audience and explains why there is so much anger against Western intervention, given the history from the end of WWII, through the Cold War to now, where the West is intervening again.
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Chris Abbott is a global security consultant and founder of the UK Policy Group for Sustainable Security and SustainableSecurity.org. He is the author of 21 Speeches that Shaped Our World: The People and Ideas that Changed the Way We Think, and Beyond Terror: The Truth About the Real Threats to Our World. In addition to several influential reports, including Global Responses to Global Threats: Sustainable Security for the 21st Century (2006) and An Uncertain Future: Law Enforcement, National Security and Climate Change (2008), his articles on global security issues are required reading for courses at universities and military colleges in Britain and the United States, including the Joint Services Command & Staff College and the US Army War College.
