" Kinzer is equally sensitive to the kinds of documentary evidence that do not necessarily form part of the official histories but that are actually more evocative of a particular time and place than those grand histories can be. Kinzer often turns, for example, to the minutia of letters and personal diaries, long forgotten books, and obscure journal articles to give even the broadest historical overview a tangible specificity. Drawing mainly on secondary sources, Kinzer shows that most regime change operations achieved their short-term goals of displacing local rulers. In overthrowing the government of Guatemala in 1954, for example, the multinational conglomerate United Fruit was free to operate as it wished and successfully convinced the Eisenhower administration that their interests were consonant with U.S. interests. Kinzer makes it clear that the principal aims for the overthrows were to establish the right of U.S. business to act as it wished, to satisfy new national ambition for expansion, to access needed resources or to obtain new markets, and to strengthen the U.S. economy at the expense of competitors. .
Overthrow takes us up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, with chapters devoted along the way to the misnamed Spanish-American war in Cuba, American intervention in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and other Latin American countries, along with America's involvement in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. What emerges from the various chapters is an obvious case of variations on a theme. As Kinzer
writes, "History does not repeat itself, but it delights in patterns and symmetries." These stories are eye opening and quite interesting. They tell of patriots, high motives, extreme courage and cruel betrayal. This book brings them together for the first time, but it seeks to do more than simply tell what happened. By considering these operations as a series of unrelated incidents, it seeks to find what they have in common.