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HomeShop at BookSurgeFictionHistoricalThe Complete and ExtraOrdinary History of the October Surprise |
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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 2 customer reviews )
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3 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Fiction or History? Jun 15, 2009
By Susan Ann
When is it real history? And when is it faux history? And how do they complement each other? And why bother with it anyway? In this exceedingly well-researched book about the 1970s hostage crisis in Iran we see the characters, through the lense of historical events, but also in a carefully designed, newly defined, and exciting series of thoughts, actions, and reactions. We all know the ending...but the political motivations, surprising liasons, sometimes hilarious character portraits, and intertwining threads of activity by governments, agencies, and individuals is woven in such a clever way that even I, (having lived through the actual events), questioned what was real and what wasn't. It was entirely illuminating. A page turner indeed.
2 of 3 found the following review helpful:
ExtraOrdinary May 12, 2009
By R. L. Beir
I have never come across a book like this. A faux history -- it is a most brilliant concept. What is history? When do history and fiction mesh? Those are the root philosophical questions behind this book.
The story is so much more. The story becomes a referendum on both the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the dictatorship of Ayatollah Khomeini. If a presidential campaign begins with the October Surprise, then where can the Reagan administration go but down a steep decline of perfidy? And if Khomeini, in the beginning of his reign, was publicly calling for the death penalty for Iranian officials who spoke to Americans and privately negotiating with those same Americans, then where would his reign land but in an abyss of hypocrisy and brutality? Is it any wonder that the world's in such upheaval and disarray? Khomeini leads to Ahmadinejad (who's in this book, by the way, as Mahmoud the Mad) and Reagan leads to both George Bush I and II. Not much has changed in the thirty years since the hostage crisis. How very sad.
This is a book for our age. What do you get when you cross satire, scholarship, imagination and sense of humor? You get this -- wonderful entertainment, amazing insight.
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