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David S. Painter, Ervand Abrahamian. The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations., The American Historical Review, Volume 118, Issue 5, December 2013, Pages 1494–1495, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/118.5.1494
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Extract
There are several good scholarly studies of the 1951–1953 Iranian crisis and August 1953 coup, but most contain gaps, misperceptions, and, in some cases, errors. In addition, numerous myths about the crisis, originally propagated to justify the coup, have continued to color both scholarly studies and popular accounts. Despite some problems, The Coup is a valuable corrective to previous work and an important contribution to Iranian history.
Ervand Abrahamian is a leading scholar of modern Iran, and his study draws on a wide range of Persian-language sources, including published primary documents, memoirs and firsthand accounts, oral histories, newspapers, and secondary works. He combines this research with careful and critical reading of British archival material. He also draws on published documents from the Foreign Relations of the United States series published by the U.S. Department of State, especially the flawed and incomplete volume on the crisis (Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954. Volume X: Iran, 1951–1954 [1989]), and an internal Central Intelligence Agency report on the coup, written by one of the participants shortly after the event, which was leaked to the press in 2000.
