A well-constructed history of a remarkable story, the repercussions of which are still felt today.
Thrilling account of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis that focuses on the little-known role of Canadian diplomats in protecting Americans.
Wright (History/Trent University/Three Nights in Havana, 2008) notes that the crisis, which transfixed the world for 444 days, was quickly forgotten by the same American public infuriated by it. When the Iranian student radicals “freed the American captives, in January 1981, the crisis faded from public view.” As a result, the role of Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor was relegated to a historical footnote. Wright argues that his actions in sheltering six U.S. diplomats who’d avoided the initial assault on the embassy were selfless and intrepid and set a high standard for diplomatic nobility. One of the narrative’s greatest strengths is the author’s sense of historical context. He sets the stage for the conflagration by looking back to 1953, when the CIA deposed the elected nationalist Mohammed Mosaddegh in favor of Shah Pahlavi, correctly perceived as in line with U.S. Cold War goals. By the ’70s, worldwide revulsion over the shah’s police-state tactics provided an opening for his nemesis, the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini, whose Islamist followers toppled the regime surprisingly fast. President Jimmy Carter’s decision to admit the shah for medical care proved the last straw for Khomeini’s student followers; Khomeini himself quickly endorsed their seizure of the embassy in order to diminish the power of moderates. This violation of diplomacy’s basic principles outraged Taylor, and through a tense series of intrigues, the Canadians wound up sheltering six fugitive American diplomats. Taylor provided much intelligence to the White House and CIA as they planned various responses (including the ill-fated “Eagle Claw” rescue mission), leading to the successful exfiltration of the fugitives, a bright spot in an otherwise disastrous period. Ronald Reagan presented him with the Congressional Gold Medal, in response to which Taylor observed, with typical modesty, “The United States faces the rebuffs of history with patience, determination, and a search for justice.”
A well-constructed history of a remarkable story, the repercussions of which are still felt today.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59051-413-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2010
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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