All the Shah's Men

In 1953 the CIA and British intelligence overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh — Iran's democratically elected prime minister — because he nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. They reinstalled the Shah. Kinzer reconstructs the coup in meticulous detail: the bribes, the fake mob, the complicit generals, the State Department officials who knew it was wrong and did it anyway. The most important book for understanding why Iran became what it became — why 1979 happened, why Iranian suspicion of American intentions is not paranoia but memory. The dispatch that shows a democracy destroyed so an oil company could keep its profits.