A01=David Farber
Alan Dawley
Anti-Americanism
Anti-communism
Anwar Sadat
Author_David Farber
Capitalism
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Central Intelligence Agency
Covert operation
Cyrus Vance
Death to America
Dissident
Energy crisis
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Foreign policy
Foreign policy of the United States
Frank Church
Gary Sick
George McGovern
Gerald Ford
Great Satan
Hamilton Jordan
Henry Kissinger
Hostage
Imperialism
Iran hostage crisis
Iranian Revolution
Islamic fundamentalism
Jimmy Carter
John F. Kennedy
Middle class
Militant
Militant (Trotskyist group)
Mohammad Mosaddegh
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Mullah
Muslim world
National security
Newspaper
OPEC
Pahlavi dynasty
Politician
Politics
Politics of Iran
Presidency of Ronald Reagan
Princeton University Press
Progressive Era
Protest
Provisional government
Pundit
Realpolitik
Revolutionary movement
Reza Shah
Rhetoric
Richard Nixon
Rights
Ronald Reagan
Ruhollah Khomeini
SAVAK
Social policy
Social science
Soviet Union
Terrorism
The New York Times
Third World
Unemployment
United States
United States Department of State
Warren Christopher
Watergate scandal
Welfare state
World War II
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Product details
- ISBN 9780691127590
- Weight: 340g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 13 Aug 2006
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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On 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 celebre 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.
David Farber is Professor of History at Temple University, specializing in twentieth-century American history. His most recent book is "Sloan Rules: Alfred P. Sloan and the Triumph of General Motors".
