Eye-opening account of hubris and blow-back in US foreign policy. ( )

See my review on my blog. ( )

An important book for all Americans. We seem to have no memory of our own history. After 9/11, the President said the terrorists hate us for our freedom. This book suggests that there are many in the world with good reason to dislike the United States. ( )

A very interesting and fascinating history on an American century of regime change--starting with the overthrow of the Hawaiian Queen Liliuokami and ending with our present debacle in Iraq. Kinzer goes behind the scenes to ferret out the characters behind the coups and the more often than not hapless victims of their ambitions. For the most part these are cautionary tales of ambition, greed and deceit filtered through a more often than not blinkered and arrogant view of righteousness and 'good' intentions and more often than not come back to haunt us sometimes 20--30 even 60 years afterwards. Many of these countries are very familiar to us--Cuba, Vietnam, Iran, Iraq. Kinzer argues that what may seem politically expedient today can have awful ramifications far into the future if not thought out carefully--a secondary theme being how little Americans in general know (or are even interested for that matter) about world history and how this leaves us unprepared to objectively view the machinations of regime change when one president or another of ours gets an idea in his head.

Particularly poignant are the chapters on Iran (the Mossadegh coup), Guatemala (Arbenz), Vietnam (the Diem assassination that JFK unwittingly provoked less than a month before his own assassination), Chile (Allende) and our aid to the Afghan rebels many of whom later will become soldiers for the Taliban or terrorists for Al Quaeda. American foreign policy throughout the century has a tendency to take its eye off the ball after deposing its enemies often leaving a slowly boiling population to suffer under the hands of ' friendly to american interests' military tyrants. Kinzer makes the point also that the aspirations of those people though usually in time come to fruition albeit more often than not with much resentment towards our government--seen afterwards for its cynicism and hypocrisy.

Kinzer is an excellent storyteller--who writes skillfully and with much verve. He is able to pare things down without losing focus on the personalities and politics involved. He is able to tie the stories together into a coherent whole. They are easy to read--not hard to understand and give much food for thought. Very well done and very much recommended. ( )

This deeply depressing history of the 14 times in the last 115 years that the US has directly overthrown a sovereign government is so good that I'm surprised it isn't better known; I more or less stumbled on it accidentally. This book makes it quite clear that some things haven't changed much over the last century. ( )