April - All The Shah's Men by Stephen Kinzer

​What happens when one country secretly overthrows another's democracy?

​In All the Shah's Men, journalist Stephen Kinzer tells the gripping true story of the 1953 CIA-backed coup that toppled Iran's democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh.

​What reads like a spy thriller is actually the origin story of modern U.S.-Iran hostility — the Shah's dictatorship, the 1979 revolution, the hostage crisis, and the rise of anti-Western extremism all trace back to this single covert operation.

​📖 Optional fiction companion: The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali — a novel of two women's friendship across class and revolution in the same era. Nonfiction for the facts, fiction for the feels. Read one or both.

​☕ 1:30–1:45 PM — Settle in, grab a drink 📖 1:45–4:00 PM — Moderated group discussion

​🛠 How Our Book Club Works • Read the book — or audiobook, articles, podcasts, even summaries. • Didn't finish? Come anyway! • First-timers welcome. Bring a friend.

​🎞 Don't have time to read the whole book? Start here:

​🎥 Coup 53 (2019) — Award-winning documentary on the 1953 CIA/MI6 coup, featuring Ralph Fiennes. Available on Prime Video. Plays like a John le Carré thriller. https://coup53.com

​🎥 American Coup (2010) — Shorter documentary (1hr 37min) focused specifically on the CIA operation and its blowback. Free on Prime. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1800242/

​🎧 Stephen Kinzer on the 1953 coup — Author interview on PBS covering Operation Ajax, the Shah, and why this history still matters. https://www.pbs.org/video/scout-dialogue-writers-collection-stephen-kinzer/

​🎧 C-SPAN BookTV — Kinzer's original talk on All the Shah's Men. https://www.c-span.org/program/book-tv/all-the-shahs-men/141518

​📖 Audiobook — 10 hrs on Audible, narrated by Michael Prichard. Reviewers say it plays like a spy novel. https://www.audible.com/pd/All-the-Shahs-Men-Audiobook/B002V0JT90