One October day in 1976, a Cuban airliner exploded over the Caribbean and crashed, killing all 73 people aboard. There should have been 74. I had a ticket on that flight, but changed my reservation at the last moment and flew to Havana on an earlier plane.

Stephen Kinzer

Mom Men Change

New media and mobile entertainment are revolutionizing the way people learn about the world.

Men World Way

During the Cold War, the non-aligned movement tried to become a 'third force' in world politics, but failed because it was too large and unwieldy.

Stephen Kinzer

War Politics Men

It is never wise to discourage youthful idealism.

Stephen Kinzer

Courage Age Youthful

Most Pakistani politics is conducted within a narrow spectrum. Politicians spend much time debating the best ways to fight India, or take Kashmir, or dominate Afghanistan, or punish the United States for its real and imagined sins.

Stephen Kinzer

Time Politics Within

Turkey can be a bridge to regimes and actions the United States can't reach. Turkey can talk to people the United States can't talk to.

Stephen Kinzer

United States United Unite

The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers created the 'Fertile Crescent' where some of the first civilizations emerged. Today they are immensely important resources, politically as well as geographically.

Stephen Kinzer

Men Where Well

By the late 1970s, repression and economic chaos were causing increasing unrest throughout Latin America. Army strongmen were forced to cede power in Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.

Stephen Kinzer

Power Men Car

Few living figures could contribute as much as Castro to our understanding of the second half of the 20th century.

Stephen Kinzer

Understanding Understand UN

From the 1920s into the 1940s, Britain's standard of living was supported by oil from Iran. British cars, trucks, and buses ran on cheap Iranian oil. Factories throughout Britain were fueled by oil from Iran. The Royal Navy, which projected British power all over the world, powered its ships with Iranian oil.

Stephen Kinzer

Power Car Ya

No authoritarian leader cedes power easily or turns it over to bodies he cannot control.

Stephen Kinzer

Power Turns Turn

During the 19th century, Iranians lost vast territories in disastrous wars, and corrupt monarchs sold everything of value in the country to foreigners.

Stephen Kinzer

War Wars Very

On Aug. 19, 1953, Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran became the first victim of a C.I.A. coup. Ten months later, on June 27, 1954, President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala became the second.

Stephen Kinzer

Sad Victim Up

For many years as a foreign correspondent, I not only worked alongside human rights advocates, but considered myself one of them. To defend the rights of those who have none was the reason I became a journalist in the first place. Now, I see the human rights movement as opposing human rights.

Stephen Kinzer

Work Men Years

Guatemala's ornate presidential palace, once a terrifying fortress whose every corridor was patrolled by heavily armed soldiers in berets and camouflage uniforms, is now a normal public building where ordinary citizens enter without fear.

Stephen Kinzer

Fear Age Zen

Castro has lived almost his entire life as a clandestine revolutionary. To such figures, truth is always malleable, always subservient to political goals.

Stephen Kinzer

Truth Life Ways

Guerrilla leaders win wars by being paranoid and ruthless. Once they take power, they are expected to abandon those qualities and embrace opposite ones: tolerance, compromise and humility. Almost none manages to do so.

Stephen Kinzer

War Power Age

Iran, in its former incarnation as Persia, created the world's first empire, produced titanic figures like Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, and is one of the great fonts of world culture.

Stephen Kinzer

Great Car World

Alliances and partnerships produce stability when they reflect realities and interests.

Stephen Kinzer

Art Tie T

Since German reunification in 1990, historians and researchers have been free to work in the East, where the lost Nazi art collection disappeared.

Stephen Kinzer

Work Art Where

No offense to Iceland, but Latin America is where the fugitive leaker Edward Snowden should settle.

Stephen Kinzer

War Where Tin

The Afghans are probably the world champions in resisting foreign domination and infiltration into their country.

Stephen Kinzer

In the 1980s, the U.S. Army invaded two Caribbean countries, Grenada and Panama, to depose leaders who had defied Washington.

Stephen Kinzer

Iran's most formidable modern leader, Reza Shah Pahlavi, was obsessed with the idea of building a steel mill, but in 1941, soon after he assembled all the components, Allied armies invaded Iran, and the project had to be abandoned.

Stephen Kinzer

Emotion is always the enemy of wise statesmanship.

Stephen Kinzer

Saudi Arabia supplies much oil to the U.S. And it is the world's largest consumer of American weaponry.

Stephen Kinzer

Many troubled Midwestern towns are grasping for ways to fend off decline and, in some cases, extinction.

Stephen Kinzer

One day, Mexico will have a leader who is nationalist not simply in rhetoric, but also in fact.

Stephen Kinzer

In some countries that are darlings of the West, like Egypt, everyone knows the result of national elections years in advance: The man in power always wins. In others, like Saudi Arabia, the very idea of an election is unthinkable.

Stephen Kinzer

In his tub-thumping speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention, Romney sounded like the hedge-fund tycoon he is.

Stephen Kinzer

Sultan Beyazid considered his father's art collection decadent and ordered it sold at auction.

Stephen Kinzer

Challenging orthodoxy is a death sentence in Washington.

Stephen Kinzer

The key to Turkey's success has been its ability to reinvent itself as times change.

Stephen Kinzer

'Operation Ajax' presents history in an entirely new way. It takes a true story and uses cutting-edge technology, never before used in this way, to bring it to spectacular life.

Stephen Kinzer

Accepting that Arabs have the right to elect their own leaders means accepting the rise of governments that do not share America's pro-Israel militancy.

Stephen Kinzer

For decades, Turkey was widely viewed as a reliable NATO ally: prickly at times, but safely in America's corner.

Stephen Kinzer

During the 1980s, international interest in the Nicaraguan war was intense. No conflict since the Spanish civil war had provoked such passion around the world. It was a classic good-versus-evil war.

Stephen Kinzer

American oil companies - including Amoco, Unocal, Exxon, Pennzoil - have invested billions of dollars in Azerbaijan and plan to invest billions more. As a result, they have developed a strongly pro-Azerbaijan position.

Stephen Kinzer

Romney is a classic case of re-invention. As governor of Massachusetts, he supported government-sponsored healthcare, was sympathetic to gay rights, and opposed harsh restrictions on abortion. After measuring the difference between the Massachusetts electorate and the national one to which he must now appeal, he has reversed those positions.

Stephen Kinzer

The long-term strategic goals of Iran and the long-term strategic goals of Turkey are close to the long-term strategic goals of the United States.

Stephen Kinzer

A few of the world's most famous non-American novelists have large followings in the United States, among them Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Guenter Grass, who were both popular even before winning the Nobel.

Stephen Kinzer

There is much to justify Turkey's reverence for Ataturk. He is the force that allowed Turkey to rise from the ashes of defeat and emerge as a vibrant new nation.

Stephen Kinzer

One of the immutable patterns of history is the rise and fall of great powers. Those that survive are the ones that adapt as the world changes.

Stephen Kinzer

After World War II, the winds of nationalism and anti-colonialism blew through the developing world.

Stephen Kinzer

In 1907, Britain and Russia signed a treaty dividing Iran between them; no Iranian was at the negotiations or even knew they were taking place.

Stephen Kinzer

The history of Chechnya is one of imperialism gone terribly wrong. In the 13th and 14th centuries, Chechens were among the few peoples to fend off Mongol conquerors, but at a terrible cost. Turks, Persians, and Russians sought to seize Chechnya, and it was finally absorbed into the Russian Empire in 1859.

Stephen Kinzer

In 1984, showing extraordinary courage, a group of Guatemalan wives, mothers and other relatives of disappeared people banded together to form the Mutual Support Group for the Appearance Alive of Our Relatives.

Stephen Kinzer

The fundamentals of what journalism is about don't necessarily change. What will change is the delivery of news.

Stephen Kinzer

Washington sees the various local and national conflicts in the Middle East as part of a battle for regional hegemony between the U.S. and Iran.

Stephen Kinzer

Israel deserves special treatment from the United States, both for historical reasons and because there can be no regional peace without a secure Israel.

Stephen Kinzer

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Latin America moved decisively away from military rule and toward civilian democracy.

Stephen Kinzer