"With the publication of this exciting story, told well and in detail, there is little mystery left about the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953. Not just the CIA but the Shah himself, key Iranians, and the support the Shah then had in the armed forces and the populace made success possible. At the center of planning (from 1951) and operations was Kermit Roosevelt, acting with the backing of the highest officials of the U.S. and the British governments. Although the Americans assumed that Mossadeq had become an ally or instrument of the Russians, the book provides no new evidence on the Soviet role." -- Foreign Affairs

"Roosevelt recounts his previous experiences in Iran with the OSS, and then runs through the details of the coup with a heavy concentration on individual personalities -- consistently depicting Mossadegh and his allies as morally or physically weak, while pro-Shah types are invariably strong... Roosevelt and his operatives fanned the flames of the pro-Shah forces while coordinating the military-backed dismissal of Mossadegh. The moral is that if the CIA is going to overthrow a government, it should make sure of the support of the population and -- oh yes, the military." -- Kirkus

"Roosevelt is surprisingly candid in his effort to recreate the feel of the times, the dialogue of the participants, the sequence of events, and the ease with which Great Powers, through their agents, could control events. It is a circus atmosphere in which the author himself is at the center of attention and power." -- Review of Middle East Studies

"This book is so outrageous in so many ways that there is real danger that it will be dismissed. It should not be. Miles Copeland's Game of Nations and Wilbur Crane Eveland's Ropes of Sand are far less outrageous, but they are of the same genre: descriptions of major American interventions carried out by adventurers with barely a surface comprehension of the complex societies with which they were playing. To be sure, the three authors have a grossly exaggerated sense of self-importance, and actual American policy was surely very different from their descriptions. But there is no reason to question the centrality of their roles, and it is most enlightening to see the reality of American policy as they remember it. American policy is the product of a complex process which the academic analyst must attempt to describe. What Roosevelt, Copeland, and Eveland are telling us is that individual adventurism at the near top was an important aspect of that process." -- Iranian Studies

"As a first book totally devoted to the 1953 coup... Countercoup is a welcome addition. With all of its limitations and Roosevelt's personal biases, this book sheds some light on this dark area in the history of Iran." -- Journal of Political & Military Sociology

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