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Younghusband
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Younghusband

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May 10th, 2006

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Guests of the Ayatollah

Guests of the Ayatollah cover

The Desert One Debacle, the cover story of May Atlantic Monthly is the first strike in an extensive media campaign for Mark Bowden’s new book Guests of the Ayatollah. Bowden has an engaging narrative style of writing history, and is renowned for his endless interview sessions. His famous book Black Hawk Down had me entranced when I first read it in early 2002. The Desert One Debacle, which details what went wrong in the botched attempt to rescue 53 American hostages in April 1980, also has a great narrative flow. I am really looking forward to reading Bowden’s account of the 444-day Iran hostage crisis. I hope to get it read this summer both in preparation for my thesis on Iran next year and for my Special Operations course this summer which covers the incident covered in Bowden’s article.

The reason I say the article is the tip of a media campaign spear is because it looks like the Atlantic is going all out to promote the book. The book was released in April alongside the May edition of The Atlantic. The Atlantic has also set up a special Iran subdomain with an interactive version of the article featuring all sorts of maps, photos and a podcast. A Guest of the Ayatollah Blog can also be found on the Atlantic site. Then there is the Guests of the Ayatollah site itself set-up with by the Atlantic Monthly Press with all kinds of healthy cross linkage with the Atlantic. BookTV has scheduled an In Depth with Mark Bowden for June 4th and 5th, and also watch for the Guests of the Ayatollah documentary in late June.

Bowden will be blogging his way across the country promoting his book. With all the current interest in Iran today these things are gonna sell like hotcakes.

Comments to this entry

Catholicgauze
May 10, 2006
1:38 am
Younghusband,
Have you read Bowden's Killing Pablo? It's an epic describing Columbian drug cartels and the effort to killing Pablo Escobar. It's a pretty good read.
Younghusband
May 10, 2006
3:53 pm
No I haven't. Kinda outside my field. As you may guess, I have a reading list a mile long and the only way I can justify reading new books is if its related. I can't wait until I get "leisure" reading time back!
lirelou
May 10, 2006
11:27 pm
Younghusband, Pity you don't have time to run down to Fayetteville, North Carolina for the Special Forces Association convention in June. You might just run into a few characters from Bowden's books.
Younghusband
May 11, 2006
12:01 am
Tomorrow I will be up at the range with the War Studies chair. Maybe I can wangle some cash out of him to attend? I can tell him it is for my course this summer... ;)
Live From The FDNF
May 15, 2006
3:09 am
The Mayaguez Incident

[Unlike the Desert One debacle, this mission ended relatively successfuly, though a tragedy of oversight doomed three Marines to a genocidal cadre]
Gollios
May 15, 2006
8:11 pm
This arrived from Amazon last Friday and I'm about a quarter of the way through it now. I can highly recommend it--the writing is excellent, and access to sources both in and out of Iran has allowed multiple points of view to surface. I was a bit too young to remember this even when it happened (at four one isn't too interested in geopolitics) but the media coverage at the time sounds all too familiar...and this was before the 24 hour news cycle.

The promotional push is interesting as well, and I suspect the documentary sales will be brisk. The book doesn't contain many maps of photos--things that many of us wonks particularly enjoy. My suspicion is that the DVDs, in addition to containing the documentary, will have tons of source interviews, news coverage, interactive maps, etc...much like the Atlantic's web site. As someone who used to do promotion, it's an impressive campaign and perhaps one of the best ever for a non-fiction book, although I'm aware I'm being suckered into picking up a DVD I don't really need.

It's also apparent from reading that Mr. Bowden owes a huge debt to the new journalism. Tom Wolfe would be proud.
Younghusband
May 18, 2006
2:09 am
The Economist weighs in (subscription req'd):

Mr Bowden's account clarifies some issues though it breaks little new ground. He finds no absolute proof, yet he clearly believes ex-hostages' allegations that the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of the hostage-takers. Mr Ahmadinejad denies this, although he admits to being part of the inner planning group. Mr Bowden does not regard Mr Carter as weak, noting that he did not flinch from military action when political imperatives indicated there was no other way out; the rescue mission was actually aborted not by Mr Carter but by its gung-ho leading officer. Mr Bowden also collects more evidence to support the theory that Reagan's aides sought to prolong the hostage ordeal until after the 1980 presidential election. But his Iranian sources dismiss these efforts as irrelevant to their decision to postpone the release until the final departure of Mr Carter, whom they hated.
The book comes into its own when it turns in novelistic detail to the high and low points of the hostages' lives.
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » 1979 Part 2
March 24, 2007
7:37 am
[...] Bloggers are all over the board on Iran’s capture of 15 British sailors, wondering if this is a rerun of American embassy hostage crisis. Allahpundit figures ... they’ll be released soon and the incident will be dismissed as a misunderstanding. Iran can’t have meant to do this, not with Ahmadinejad set to address the Security Council tomorrow about the nuclear program and not to the British, who’ve been adamant in opposing any military action on Iran. [...]