Guests of the Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis

 

Guests of the Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis  by Mark Bowden

The are few international events over the last fifty years that are remembered with as much infamy as the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979-1980.  I was fairly young at the time and wasn’t familiar with the intricacies, yet I distinctly remember the anger and sorrow of my fellow citizens.  Before November 4, 1979, I would guess most Americans couldn’t find Iran on the map. Nor were they familiar with names such as the Ayatollah Khomeni, or the recently exiled Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

When this book was written 25 years after the crisis, my guess is many still didn’t know much of the details, which was the entire point of this book. This is an excellent read. It’s a long read at about 700 pages, but it never feels that way. Mark Bowden knows how to keep this story at a high enough level to where he never gets mired too low in the weeds with too much detail.

The main focus is the hostages. The individuals that had the misfortune of simply working at the American Embassy in Tehran and were very familiar with the hostility of the residents of this country. When the tempers flared on that ignoble day and the compound was stormed by the radical students, the American workers at the embassy weren’t too concerned. They had all been through this before to some extent.

Well, as the dots get connected, it soon becomes apparent that this is not a temporal event to exorcize political futility. This is the real deal. Soon the crisis is the headline on every newspaper and the leading story on every news network for months.  Like most tragedies, the longer it goes on, the more the public forgets. No one expected the captives to be held hostage for a grueling 444 days, and after the first months pass, much of world forgets about the prisoners.

There are a lot of names to keep track of within this book. I’m not sure how many of the 53 hostages that Bowden focuses on, he goes back and forth rather quickly, and I had trouble keeping track of every hostage, their backgrounds, their roles, their history, etc. Yet this really doesn’t take much away from the overall reading experience. When we read about the travails of each hostage, the “who” really isn’t as important as the “what”. Which brings me to the title of this book. Although I would never minimize the horror that these individuals endured, the author asserts that the hostages, for the most part, were treated better than one might imagine. In some instances one might be able to argue that they were “guests” as opposed to “hostages”.  Some of the captors were much more friendly than others, and things such as Christmas parties and the ability to write letters home were part of the captivity. During the middle of the ordeal,  Iran finds itself at war with neighboring Iraq, and the students even entertain the possibility of arming their captives to assist them in fighting the enemy. That’s not to say it was all sunshine and roses. There were plenty of times when the captives would be beaten or isolated, usually for insubordination and for insults hurled by the hostages themselves. And we can never kid ourselves into thinking that anytime someone is a “hostage”, that it could ever be acceptable or tolerable.

One of the more unlikely elements of this tragedy is that Iran really didn’t have any kind of structural government in place, so the students who raided the embassy and started the whole event really didn’t have any authority to do so.  Once the crisis started, you almost got the impression that the captors, and the country itself, really didn’t know what to do next. Their only demand was that the Shah be returned, but once that became obviously impossible, you could tell that this whole event was perpetrated by amateurs. Add the fact that the country was essentially run by the hardcore cleric Khomeni, there wasn’t really much that could be done other than wait for some sort of unknown future event to somehow unfold to change the situation.

The author also spends good portions of the book describing the U.S. government under Jimmy Carter’s efforts to end the standoff, the planning and failure of the rescue attempt, and also the history of the relations between Iran and the United States. Sadly, what many Americans at the time failed to acknowledge was the fact that the United States wasn’t exactly squeakly clean when they orchestrated a coup in Iran back in 1953 that ousted leader Mohammed Mosaddegh that put the Shah back on the throne.  Let’s just say that the motivation of the United States was a far cry from anything altruistic or philanthropic.

The chapters are also nice and brief.  Most chapters are about 10-15 pages long which helps with such a thick volume. This also allows us to never get bored and we can quickly jump from one part of the story to another.  As someone who reads a lot of history, I wish many authors would learn such a method. The author also includes an epilogue that tells the reader “where are they now” 25 years after the conclusion of this horrific event.

Overall this was a great account of an infamous time in the history of America. I’m sure there have been multiple books written about this event, but my guess is that this is probably the best one to give the reader a strong sense of the whole picture of everything and everyone involved.

The Undoing of Saint Silvanus

 

The Undoing of Saint Silvanus by Beth Moore

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that I enjoyed so much for the first two-thirds, and then felt I was reading a different, much worse, book during the last third.  This book had so much potential. Part of my enjoyment was that I had no idea that Beth Moore had ever written a novel. If you don’t know, Beth Moore is one of the more well-known Bible teachers and authors in the world. Just about every women’s group in every protestant denomination across the country has, at one time or another, had a “Beth Moore” Bible study.  She’s even been more in the news as of late for having courage to speak out against (and eventually leave) the Southern Baptist Convention for now worshipping Donald Trump instead of Jesus as God.

Beth Moore proves she can write very well and does have the ability to tell a unique, well-articulated story.  A strange death in New Orleans occurs; the victim is a street vagrant with seemingly no ties to anyone, so the investigation almost ends as soon as it begins. Well, it turns out that the victim has a well-known mother in New Orleans, and a daughter in San Francisco who never even knew him. The daughter, Jillian, comes to New Orleans and has an uncomfortable meeting with her grandmother (who she has never met either).  The grandmother, Olivia, is a well-respected citizen who has turned an abandoned church (Saint Silvanus) into an apartment that houses four or five tenants that she also manages.

Jillian has an uncomfortable union and relationship with Olivia, but she wants to try to put the puzzle pieces together of her lost, forgotten family. In addition to an investigation, there is also plenty of sudden, weird goings-on at Saint Silvanus and Moore does an excellent job telling this straight-forward, yet somewhat spooky tale.  Why are these weird, somewhat supernatural, things happening, and how to they connect?  So far, so good.

As great as Moore is, there were still some minor squabbles I had with the story at first. The tenants at Saint Silvanus seem to warm up to Jillian awfully quickly. You would think they had known her for sixty years as opposed to six weeks.  Even the four or five police officers who are always making appearances at the complex seem far too chummy with these people who they are supposed to be serving and protecting. I would have also liked to have read more about Jillian’s friends and relationships back in San Francisco that the author seemed to completely forget. But these are minor transgressions.

Well, about 300 pages or so into this 450-page book, we encounter a big “ah-hah” within our story.  A big revelation happens that should floor the gas pedal of this tale and propel us to a high level of intensity that you have come to expect in books such as this. It never happens. I’ve never felt so let down in the middle of such an engrossing tale.  Moore simply lets the story die and instead focuses on Jillian’s state of mind and eventual redemption. The book soon became a slog to wade through.  Instead of progressing with the story, we’re pulled kicking and screaming into an introspective story and are forced to read about things like endless episodes of cooking and eating recipes and laborious descriptions of clothes bought for one of the characters while they’re in the hospital.

Being such a prominent Christian, I guess Beth Moore feels like the story itself isn’t important, and wants to instead shift gears and tell us about her broken characters and how they find Christ.   Note that I don’t mean to minimize such an event, but this was too “in your face” for my tastes.  I felt Moore could have accomplished her goal without dropping the original story and abrasively shifting gears.  It kind of reminds me of stories I’ve heard with some church youth groups that invite their friends to their church for a “Pizza Party”, but once the guests arrive, they lock them in the church and force them to listen to the gospel before they’re allowed to eat.

Again though, Moore proves she can write good fiction. It’s just a shame she got so distracted along the way.  If she ever tries again, I’ll definitely give her another shot.  This was a book that I had trouble putting down for the first 300 pages yet had trouble picking it pack up for the last 150. Let’s hope that if there is ever a “next time”, it will be a lot better.

The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, sign stealing, & bench-clearing brawls

 

The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, sign stealing, & bench-clearing brawls by Jason Turbow with Michael Duca

As I write this review, the baseball community is still in a bit of shock after the Houston Astros cheating scandal that was revealed by a former player that caused two managers and a general manager to be fired.  Sports commentator Stephen Smith brazenly proclaimed that the Astros should have their World Series championship title stripped away from them.  Quickly to rebut Smith are celebrity athletes such as former NBA ballplayer Charles Barkley.  “All. Ballplayers. Cheat.” Barkley asserts.  Rather crass, and possibly unbelievable.  All ball players cheat?? Really??  Well, sadly this book by author Jason Turbow leads the reader to believe this sad fact about Major League Baseball is, in fact, true.

This book was written seven years prior to the Astros championship, and I think that if every fan had read a copy of this book before the accusations started flying, the Houston ballclub might not have been viewed with quite as much scorn.  That’s not to say that this behavior should be encouraged, let alone tolerated, but when a sport has existed well over a century with a certain “code” that everyone is expected to follow, stopping such events isn’t as easy as flipping off a light switch.

Let’s say you’re a young pitcher in the Major Leagues and your manager doesn’t like a player on the other team.  The reason? Something stupid like the guy hit a home run against your team three months ago.  So the manager instructs you: “Hit them hard with a pitch”.  Well, what would YOU do?  Refuse your manager? If so, have fun being demoted to the minor leagues.  Bring this accusation to the attention of the higher authorities of the sport?  Well, you might as well kiss your career in the big leagues goodbye.

Now, this book isn’t only about cheating in the big leagues, but rather the many codes that exist and are followed just because these codes have always existed.  Does the pitcher have a no-hitter going past the 5^th inning?  If so, you better make sure NO ONE on the bench says the word “no-hitter” out loud. In fact, don’t even talk to the pitcher at all.  God help you if you violate this code.  Such idiotic “codes” have always been in-place, and rarely do you encounter a testosterone-filled jock that will speak against the code and say something like “Isn’t this all kind of stupid?”

So the author gives us plenty, almost too many, anecdotes throughout the game’s long history of these codes and who the main perpetrators have always been – both the enforcers and the code breakers.  It’s quite a harsh book, but perhaps I’m naïve.  Let’s just say I have lost a lot of respect for such Hall of Famers as Don Drysdale and Nolan Ryan after reading such accounts.  Most fans probably remember the Nolan Ryan / Robin Ventura altercation where Ventura charged the mound.   Did Ryan hit him with a pitch on purpose? Yep. Why?  Well, Ventura has the nerve to hit a home run off him.   You may ask: “Well isn’t that his job???”  We also read about how Nolan Ryan could be particularly nasty if any batter tried to get on base by bunting off him. You want to say “Gee. Nolan. That’s kind of what they’re supposed to do.”  Sad when we find out our heroes are made of clay.

After reading a whole book of incidents like this, I can’t help but be rather turned off by such barbaric accounts. Some of these stories were brutal in the reflections. And yes, baseball teams (not individual players, but entire teams) were stealing signs long before the Houston Astros were banging on trash cans.  Remember the guy behind the outfield wall who updated the score by placing the numbers in the slots? You could always see him behind the scoreboard through one of those empty slots. Well, what the home teams used to do is to get the guy involved in the cheating, even though he’s not even a player.  If the pitch coming up will be a fastball, the guy is instructed to recline one of his feet on the ledge of a vacated slot.  Curveball? Both feet.  Change up? No feet at all.

Although this is an interesting book that keeps your attention, someone like me felt disgusted quite a bit.  If you’re a pitcher ticked off at a hitter because he bunted against you, shouldn’t you avenge yourself by, say, striking him out as opposed to hurling a fastball at his head?   Well, I guess some will continue to insist that boys will be boys.

For someone like me, the one thing that gives me a bit of hope is that the game as started to become stricter concerning these incidents.  Now that teams spend tens of millions of dollars on a player, they’re not going to damage their investment. They’re not going to let a cranky infielder on the other team slide hard into their shortstop trying to break up a double play by grinding his filed shoe spikes into the shortstop’s calf.  I find such refinements refreshing, but for a lot of old school players who have hobbies such as eating raw meat, these new restrictions come across to them as something that is “ruining the game”.

As a kid I always fantasized about being a major league baseball. After reading this book, a huge part of me is glad that my dream never came true.