Guests of the Ayatollah, Mark Bowden
Guests of the Ayatollah, Mark Bowden
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Guests of the Ayatollah

Author: Mark Bowden

Narrator: Mark Bowden

Abridged: 9 hr 57 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/25/2006


Synopsis

On November 4, 1979, a group of radical Islamist students, inspired by revolutionary Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They took fifty-two Americans hostage and kept nearly all of them captive 444 days.

The Iran hostage crisis was a watershed moment in American history. It was America's first showdown with Islamic fundamentalism, a confrontation at the forefront of American policy to this day. It was also a powerful dramatic story that captivated the American people, launched yellow-ribbon campaigns, made celebrities of the hostage's families, and crippled the reelection campaign of President Jimmy Carter.

Mark Bowden tells this sweeping story through the eyes of the hostages, their radical, naïve captors, the soldiers sent on the impossible mission to free them, and the diplomats working to end the crisis. Taking listeners from the Oval Office to the hostages' cells, Guests of the Ayatollah is a remarkably detailed, brilliantly re-created, and suspenseful account of a crisis that gripped and ultimately changed the world.

About Mark Bowden

Mark Bowden is the author of Road Work, Finders Keepers, Killing Pablo, Black Hawk Down (nominated for a National Book Award), Bringing the Heat, and Doctor Dealer. He reported at The Philadelphia Inquirer for twenty years and is a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly. He lives in the Philadelphia area.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sharon on February 07, 2024

Mark Bowden does an exceptional job with Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War With Militant Islam. It is about the Iran hostage crisis where radical Islamic students stormed the US embassy in Tehran and captured 52 Americans. The Americans were held hostage for 444 days. I liste......more

Goodreads review by Oleksandr on December 27, 2023

This is a non-fiction account of the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. The author delves deep into the complexities of the situation, offering a detailed narrative of (1) motivations, (2) participants and (3) attempts to solve the crisis by various means, including military. I’m curious how would have Am......more

Goodreads review by Jeffrey (Akiva) on June 30, 2022

Even prior to Argo's popularity, I always found myself incredibly interested in the Iranian Revolution. This is for two primary reasons: 1. it was a revolution in which the outcome wasn't preordained or even mass imagined. Indeed, it was described by both its actors and American observers as "unthin......more

Goodreads review by Megan on January 29, 2024

I've always wanted to know more about the events that led to the American hostage crisis over in Iran in 1979, and this book does not disappoint when it comes to providing exhaustive details drawn from a multitude of sources (including interviews with many of the 53 hostages themselves). I now feel......more

Goodreads review by Ross on November 27, 2007

Great book about the Iranian Hostage crisis. Being born in the late 1970s, I do not remember this on TV (obviously). But some of the action was riveting...at times it felt like a novel. I really liked the parts where Bowden takes the reader inside the Carter Administration. For those of you who crit......more