Stephen Kinzer is an award winning foreign correspondent whose articles and books have led the Washington Post to place him "among the best in popular foreign policy storytelling." Kinzer spent more than 20 years working for the New York Times, and was also the Times bureau chief in Nicaragua during the 1980s, and in Germany during the early 1990s. In 1996 he was named chief of the newly opened Times bureau in Istanbul. Later he was appointed national culture correspondent, based in Chicago. Since leaving the Times Kinzer has taught journalism, political science, and international relations at Northwestern University and Boston University. He has written books about Central America, Rwanda, Turkey, and Iran, as well as others that trace the history of American foreign policy. He contributes to the New York Review of Books and writes a world affairs column for the Guardian. Based on this information Overthrow promises to be a great learning experience as this book lays out a little over 100 years of modern American history.
Overthrow is a book focusing on how Americans used different means to overthrow fourteen foreign governments that displeased them for various ideological, political, and economic reasons. The main idea that Kinzer is trying to communicate to readers is in "This set a pattern. Throughout the twentieth century and into the beginning of the twenty- first, the United States repeatedly used its military power, and that of its clandestine services, to overthrow governments that refused to protect American interests. Each time, it cloaked its intervention in the rhetoric of national security and liberation. In most cases, however, it acted mainly for economic reasons – specifically, to establish, promote, and defend the right of Americans to do business around the world without interference.".
Throughout Overthrow, one finds reference to primary source material like the Honolulu Daily Bulletin of January
17, 1893, and an editorial in the New York Evening Post on February 1, 1901 in the chapter, "A Hell of a Time Up at the Palace.