Stephen Kinzer:
"Overthrow" (Henry Holt, 2006)
(Copyright © 2006 Piero Scaruffi | Legal restrictions - Termini d'uso )
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The topic is interesting. The book is not. It would be great to have an
objective and accurate chronicle of USA's foreign policy targeting "regime
change". This book covers the most famous of the coups engineered by USA
entities, but does so in a somewhat fictionalized manner that makes it
less compelling and less reliable, halfway between a reporter's style
and a popular historian's style. Kinzer frequently imagines the kind of
dialogues that were going on behind the scenes. It might be a nice trick to
sell more books, but it hardly lends the book credibility.
On the other hand, he provides too little context to understand how things
happened.
For example, when it discusses how Russian-born USA businessman Sam Zemurray gained control of Honduras by having Manuel Bonilla oust and replace president Miguel Davila, Kinzer does not quite explain in detail that four years earlier Nicaraguan troops had removed Manuel Bonilla and installed Miguel Davila as president of Honduras. Therefore Davila was not exactly a democratically elected president.
In other cases the lack of context makes the USA seem less guilty than it is:
Kinzer rarely mentions the thousands of innocents who lost their lives because
of the USA-engineered coups.
If you are looking for anti-USA literature, you can find much more effervescent books published in Europe. If you are looking for a historian's perspective on USA foreign policy, you won't find much here. If you just want a quick summary of the main foreign campaigns undertaken by the USA outside of real wars, this may do. |
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