****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
As a lay student of American history, I've always been fascinated with how our country has conducted itself overseas in the wake of Manifest Destiny. While I have picked up an article or analysis on particular U.S. interventions here or there, I have never come across a holistic treatment of the issue - until now. The wait has been worth it."Overthrow" was not only painstakingly researched, but also written in the tone of historical fiction - although it is historical fact. Kinzer is a great story teller, inviting his reader to pull up a chair and watch the drama and intrigue unfold at close range - all the better to be revulsed. Some wonderful asides - for example, the replication of the John Foster Dulles study on a Texas campus, pickled for posterity - add great color. The author's segmentation of his narrative, allowing the reader to get a brief (perhaps all too brief) snapshot of the impact of American intervention on a given set of countries and form his or her conclusions, is also quite helpful. And there are some occasional surprises by the author, such as when he chides JFK for failing to lead his brain trust to an obvious conclusion regarding what to do (or not to) about the Diem regime and when he pays George W. Bush the backhanded compliment of stating that he has engaged in nation-building (cleaning up after one's mess) more than many of his interventionist predecessors.Kinzer does a fine job expounding on his premise that corporate interests play a large role in driving U.S. foreign policy and explaining why the axiom "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" can often prove fallacious. He does an even better job striking an important cautionary note regarding how Washington's rationale for intervention is deftly wrapped in the cloth of patriotism and The Mission of Democracy and signed, sold and delivered to the public.By and large, Kinzer takes a clear left-of-center view of things. The reader who is not a card-carrying liberal will need to weigh the author's words carefully. Kinzer seems overgenerous at times in ascribing American democratic ideals to virtually all of the leaders who found themselves at the other end of Washington's power games, and in fact some of his background on these leaders (land redistribution, nationalization, Czech weapons imports, etc.) weaken that assertion. Some readers may also quibble with Kinzer's definition of what is equitable in the world of business affairs (his endorsement of a strict 50-50 split of revenues from oil drilling in Iran begs the question of the role of Western technology and expertise in getting the black gold out of the earth). And then there is the issue of the historical quotes: are they as accurate as they read or must the reader assume them to be the best paraphrase of a conversation historically available, even though direct quotation marks are used?Despite these reservations, there's no denying that "Overthrow" is a fast-moving catalogue of many of America's gaffes, sins and self-delusions, foisted upon the world stage with serious and far-reaching consequences.We Americans are still paying a price. It's just that, until this book, most of us didn't know it.
