Our Man In Tehran - Softcover

Wright, Robert

3.94

386 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1554683009 ISBN 13: 9781554683000

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2011

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The explosive national bestseller

Finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Non-Fiction

The world watched with fear in November 1979, when Iranian students infiltrated and occupied the American embassy in Tehran. As the city exploded in a fury of revolution, few knew about the six American embassy staff who escaped into hiding. For three months, Ken Taylor, the Canadian ambassador to Iran—along with his wife and embassy staffers—concealed the Americans in their homes, terrified that Ayatollah Khomeini would find out and exact deadly consequences.

In Our Man in Tehran, Robert Wright, author of the award-winning national bestseller Three Nights in Havana, tells the story behind a major historical flashpoint, a story of cloak-and-dagger intrigue, the stuff of John le Carr� and Frederick Forsyth made real--and the story Ben Affleck didn't get quite right in his Oscar-winning movie based on the Canadian caper, Argo.

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About the Author:

Robert Wright, PhD, is professor of history at Trent University Durham in Oshawa, Ontario. He is the author of the national bestsellers Three Nights in Havana and The Night Canada Stood Still, both of which won the Canadian Authors Association’s Lela Common Award for Canadian History, and Our Man in Tehran, which was made into an award-winning documentary film. He lives in Toronto with his wife and children.

Carter’s reciprocal state visit to Iran occurred over New Year’s Eve 1978, a one-night stop on a nine-day tour of the Middle East. The president’s critics liked to say that he had a knack for bringing trouble down on himself, and on this occasion they were dead right. During a lavish banquet for the president, the shah introduced Carter by speaking of Americans’ “high ideals of right and justice, moral beliefs in human values.” Ignoring his advisers’ suggestion that he respond with understatement, Carter answered with an equally obsequious speech. “Iran, because of the great leadership of the shah,” said Carter, “is an island of stability in one of the more troubled parts of the world. This is a great tribute to you, your majesty, and to your leadership, and to the respect and admiration and love which your people give to you.” Broadcast throughout Iran and around the world, the president’s body language conveyed at least as much as his words. Speaking extemporaneously, his face intensely sincere, one hand in his suit-coat pocket, the president turned and faced the shah directly when he spoke of the love of the Iranian people. Coming from a man renowned for his monotonous speeches and his Southern Baptist reserve, it was unexpected, unscripted, and eartfelt. It was, in short, a bombshell. And in Iran it changed everything.

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