Iranian Hostage
Author: Rocky Sickmann
Publisher: Topeka, Kan. : Crawford Press
Published: 1982
Total Pages: 364
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe only known diary to have been smuggled out of Iran by a released hostage is presented.
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Taken Hostage
Author: David Farber
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2009-01-10
Total Pages: 224
ISBN-13: 1400826209
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOn November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran and took sixty-six Americans captive. Thus began the Iran Hostage Crisis, an affair that captivated the American public for 444 days and marked America's first confrontation with the forces of radical Islam. Using hundreds of recently declassified government documents, historian David Farber takes the first in-depth look at the hostage crisis, examining its lessons for America's contemporary War on Terrorism. Unlike other histories of the subject, Farber's vivid and fast-paced narrative looks beyond the day-to-day circumstances of the crisis, using the events leading up to the ordeal as a means for understanding it. The book paints a portrait of the 1970s in the United States as an era of failed expectations in a nation plagued by uncertainty and anxiety. It reveals an American government ill prepared for the fall of the Shah of Iran and unable to reckon with the Ayatollah Khomeini and his militant Islamic followers. Farber's account is filled with fresh insights regarding the central players in the crisis: Khomeini emerges as an astute strategist, single-mindedly dedicated to creating an Islamic state. The Americans' student-captors appear as less-than-organized youths, having prepared for only a symbolic sit-in with just a three-day supply of food. ABC news chief Roone Arledge, newly installed and eager for ratings, is cited as a critical catalyst in elevating the hostages to cause célèbre status. Throughout the book there emerge eerie parallels to the current terrorism crisis. Then as now, Farber demonstrates, politicians failed to grasp the depth of anger that Islamic fundamentalists harbored toward the United States, and Americans dismissed threats from terrorist groups as the crusades of ineffectual madmen. Taken Hostage is a timely and revealing history of America's first engagement with terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, one that provides a chilling reminder that the past is only prologue.
Guests of the Ayatollah
Author: Mark Bowden
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
Published: 2007-12-01
Total Pages: 710
ISBN-13: 1555846084
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe New York Times–bestselling author of Black Hawk Down delivers a “suspenseful and inspiring” account of the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 (The Wall Street Journal). On November 4, 1979, a group of radical Islamist students, inspired by the revolutionary Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They took fifty-two Americans captive, and kept nearly all of them hostage for 444 days. In Guests of the Ayatollah, Mark Bowden tells this sweeping story through the eyes of the hostages, the soldiers in a new special forces unit sent to free them, their radical, naïve captors, and the diplomats working to end the crisis. Bowden takes us inside the hostages’ cells and inside the Oval Office for meetings with President Carter and his exhausted team. We travel to international capitals where shadowy figures held clandestine negotiations, and to the deserts of Iran, where a courageous, desperate attempt to rescue the hostages exploded into tragic failure. Bowden dedicated five years to this research, including numerous trips to Iran and countless interviews with those involved on both sides. Guests of the Ayatollah is a detailed, brilliantly recreated, and suspenseful account of a crisis that gripped and ultimately changed the world. “The passions of the moment still reverberate . . . you can feel them on every page.” —Time “A complex story full of cruelty, heroism, foolishness and tragic misunderstandings.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “Essential reading . . . A.” —Entertainment Weekly
444 Days
Author: Sidney C. Moody
Publisher:
Published: 1981
Total Pages: 196
ISBN-13: 9780831745714
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe dramatic and historic events of the seizure, detention and ultimate release of the 52 American hostages of Iran, told chronologically as the weeks and months passed.
The Destined Hour
Author: Barbara Rosen
Publisher: Doubleday Books
Published: 1982
Total Pages: 360
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFormer hostage, Barry Rosen, gives a first-person account of the take-over of the American embassy in Iran and his 444 days in captivity juxtaposed with his wife's account of the effect of these events on the families of the hostages.
Nationalism in Iran
Author: Richard W. Cottam
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
Published: 1979-06-15
Total Pages: 385
ISBN-13: 0822974207
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFor a brief period in the early 1950s, Iranian nationalism captured the world's attention as, under the leadership of Mohammad Mossadeq, the Iranian National Movement tried to liberate Iran from British imperialism. Regarding nationalism as a major determinant of the attitudes and loyalties of those who embrace it, Cottam analyzes the complex religious, national, and social values at work within Iran and examines, more generally, the turbulence of nationalism in developing states and its perplexing problems for American foreign policy. In a new 40-page chapter, added in 1978, Cottam updated his pioneering study by examining the condition of Iran fifteen years after his first analysis-from its rapid economic growth as an oil producer to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's unsuccessful efforts to rouse nationalistic sentiment in his favor.
In the Shadow of the Ayatollah
Author: William Daugherty
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Published: 2016-08-15
Total Pages: 289
ISBN-13: 1612516548
DOWNLOAD EBOOKStill vivid in many Americans' memories are the 444 days of 1979 when Islamic militants held U.S. diplomatic personnel hostage in Iran. Though their story has been told before, never has it been related from such a perspective. Unique among the hostages, the author was an officer for the Central Intelligence Agency serving at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Once his CIA connection was discovered, Bill Daugherty became a special target of his captors and was subjected to extraordinarily harsh treatment. He managed to survive the ordeal by relying upon his Marine Corps training and combat experience and his remarkable inner reserve of fortitude. Ultimately he was awarded the State Department Medal of Valor and the CIA Exceptional Service Medal. Drawing on intelligence information not readily available to previous writers, recently declassified materials, interviews with such key government officials as former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and former CIA director and ambassador to Iran Richard Helms, and to his own firsthand knowledge, Daugherty sheds light on this disturbing event, particularly with respect to the decision-making process in the White House. Among his revelations is the involvement of the Soviet Union. Despite his personal involvement, Daugherty has produced an impressively objective account of the tragedies and triumphs that marked this black time in U.S. history. It is both a harrowing adventure story and a serious look at U.S.-Iran relations. The pivotal event continues to evoke emotions and begs careful analysis for potential lessons learned.
Our Man in Tehran
Author: Robert Wright
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
Published: 2011-01-11
Total Pages: 433
ISBN-13: 1590514130
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFor the true story behind Argo, read Our Man in Tehran The world watched with fear in November 1979, when Iranian students infiltrated and occupied the American embassy in Tehran. The Americans were caught entirely by surprise, and what began as a swift and seemingly short-lived takeover evolved into a crisis that would see fifty four embassy personnel held hostage, most for 444 days. As Tehran exploded in a fury of revolution, six American diplomats secretly escaped. For three months, Ken Taylor, the Canadian ambassador to Iran—along with his wife and embassy staffers—concealed the Americans in their homes, always with the prospect that the revolutionary government of Ayatollah Khomeini would exact deadly consequences. The United States found itself handcuffed by a fractured, fundamentalist government it could not understand and had completely underestimated. With limited intelligence resources available on the ground and anti-American sentiment growing, President Carter turned to Taylor to work with the CIA in developing their exfiltration plans. Until now, the true story behind Taylor’s involvement in the escape of the six diplomats and the Eagle Claw commando raid has remained classified. In Our Man in Tehran, Robert Wright takes us back to a major historical flashpoint and unfolds a story of cloak-and-dagger intrigue that brings a new understanding of the strained relationship between the Unites States and Iran. With the world once again focused on these two countries, this book is the stuff of John le Carré and Daniel Silva made real.
Argo
Author: Antonio Mendez
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2013-02-06
Total Pages: 321
ISBN-13: 0147509734
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe true account of a daring rescue that inspired the film ARGO, winner of the 2012 Academy Award for Best Picture On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran and captured dozens of American hostages, sparking a 444-day ordeal and a quake in global politics still reverberating today. But there is a little-known drama connected to the crisis: six Americans escaped. And a top-level CIA officer named Antonio Mendez devised an ingenious yet incredibly risky plan to rescue them before they were detected. Disguising himself as a Hollywood producer, and supported by a cast of expert forgers, deep cover CIA operatives, foreign agents, and Hollywood special effects artists, Mendez traveled to Tehran under the guise of scouting locations for a fake science fiction film called Argo. While pretending to find the perfect film backdrops, Mendez and a colleague succeeded in contacting the escapees, and smuggling them out of Iran. Antonio Mendez finally details the extraordinarily complex and dangerous operation he led more than three decades ago. A riveting story of secret identities and international intrigue, Argo is the gripping account of the history-making collusion between Hollywood and high-stakes espionage.
Hostage 444
Author: Larry Koster
Publisher: iUniverse
Published: 2000-12
Total Pages: 634
ISBN-13: 059516661X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn 1925, The Shah of Iran tests all the Iranian children, ages five and six. Of these, twenty-six of the brightest will be selected and nurtured in the ways of the western world. The children's education would protect Iran in years to come. The discovery of oil and his distrust of the westerners is behind the Shah's determination. One boy by the name of Quasaam, tests genius and proves it later in years. They call in Quasaam to help solve a catastrophic problem when they tell him that Iran will runout of oil in the year 2008. Quasaam contrives a scheme-A study is made to choose the most brilliant college student in the United States, having political tendencies. Harry Truman Strongwater is chosen. Later, the Iranians manipulate him to go to Iran. When he arrives at the embassy, the militants storm the American Embassy and they hold the Hostages for 444 days. During that time Harry goes through a brain metamorphose. The purpose is for Harry Strongwater to befriend Iran when he is pressed into becoming President of the United States. Davood the overseer for Iran and Chris Cavanaugh from the Irish Republican Army carry out the plan in the United States. All goes well until he asks Chris Cavanaugh to kill the President if he fails-"I can buy the Vice President."
