In the terrifying takeover you feel you are there. You experience the fear, uncertainty, frenetic rush to make the best decisions, destroy documents and the domino of decisions to surrender. These people had been through all this a few months earlier when leftists took over the embassy briefly. (One wonders what procedures were put in place to prepare for this in the intervening months.) You never lose sight of the personal cost and effect of this assault throughout the book.

It's also a fascinating study of geo-politics as we witness the evolution of a hazardous undertaking that at first repulsed then won the support of a fragile revolutionary council. Iranian politicos and clerics cleverly orchestrate focused hatred on an outside power while consolidating the throne of fanatical islamists.

I appreciated the detailed account of the failed rescue attempt. We tend take well-honed, precise military operations for granted and overlook how many uncontrolled variables and unknown obstacles must be met with creative field work. His account gives you an appreciation for what these men do.

I also liked getting a fuller understanding of how our leaders were working behind the headlines. While the Carter presidency justly earned a poor reputation, I refrained from second guessing what the administration did or didn't do here. This account shows how we don't know a lot of the facts. It gave me a greater appreciation for making decisions while on the hotseat and without the benefit of hindsight future pundits enjoy.

It was interesting to see the red herrings and slender threads offered for grasping. I would like to have known more of the stories of the 6 who escaped with the help of other embassies. I liked learning where many of the Iranians involved ended up years later, as well as some snippets from the author's visits to Iran to prepare for the book.

I was a bit too young to remember, much less understand, the events that unfolded on 4 November 1979 (that have since been eclipsed by the events of 11 September 2001). Years later, I remember going to class down a hallway where one could spot the occasional faded sticker on a locker door that had the Stars and Stripes and screamed "Free the hostages!" on the bottom. I would wonder what that was all about and what that meant. Two decades later, after hearing about these events through the prism of media reports, I got this book. After reading it, I can honestly say that it will be considered a "primary source" for historians for decades to come.

The book reads like a novel; constructed with dialogue and differing points of view, from the Iranian militant students who stormed the embassy, to the Carter administration, the Delta Force that eventually took part in the ill-fated Operation Eagle Claw, and the hostages themselves. Bowden does a commendable job of reconstructing these events and the American, Iranian, and to a lesser extent, the world reaction to the embassy takeover. At the close of the book, an at-length expose of Iran a quarter century later, as well as what became of some of the 66 hostages (11 of whom have since died, making the writing of books such as these ever more important as time passes) closes the circle and leaves the reader with much to think about and to consider.

Perhaps the greatest strength of the book is Mr. Bowden's commendable efforts to contact as many of the participants as possible, to include U.S. government officials, Iranian government officials, and interviews with the participants, both hostage takers and hostages alike. This makes for a well-balanced, objective look at the events of that time. No one can justify the seizure of an embassy, as it goes against every convention and all diplomatic protocol imaginable, but Mr. Bowden deserves much credit for nonetheless working tirelessly to look at, and present the events, from the Iranian angle regardless. It is also an "easy" read (not dry or bogged down in any way); once I began I found it hard to put down. I find it curious that the review I first encountered decried the changes in scenery and the long "dramatis personae"; while indeed this does occur, I found it less daunting than in other books. It is also helpful that many of the people we encounter here are people we already know about.

The weaknesses are something I feel compelled to nit-pick. Mr. Bowden apparently does not believe that capitalization of proper nouns is necessary in the English language. Would it have physically pained him to capitalize different branches of service, titles, and offices, all of which can be said to be proper nouns, or was he flirting with the writing convention of e.e. cummings? It is hard to say, but I found this grating. I am curious as to why the Ayatollah Khomeini was constantly referred to as an imam, which is the Arabic, not Farsi, term for what the Iranians would call a mullah (an ayatollah being the highest-ranked mullah), but no explanation of this usage was provided anywhere. As the book concluded with the release of the hostages, Mr. Bowden kept referring to Inauguration Day as happenning on the 21st of January, even though the inauguration, as all have since 1937, took place at 12 noon on the 20th (8:30 p.m. in Tehran, also on the 20th). Finally, being as I am not old enough to recall the embassy takeover, I found it curious that, especially in the beginning, he kept alluding to a previous embassy takeover in February 1979, in the very beginning of the Islamic Revolution, but he provided no further explanation as to what happened (other than a similar event that took place at the U.S. consulate in Tabriz that he briefly highlights). Perhaps it would have been even more illustrative had he began here as a prologue, and then kicked off his book with the cold, wet early November day that would go so terribly wrong with the U.S. embassy in Tehran.

Nonetheless, I found this book to be a first-rate chronicle of the 444 day hostage crisis that essentially ended a presidency and has kept U.S.-Iranian relations on ice ever since. If you are like me, and lack first-hand knowledge of what happened during those days, this book will benefit you by providing you with plenty of details of all that happened then. If you are old enough to remember this time period, perhaps even watching the program that would eventually turn into the modern-day "Nightline" back then, you will learn a great deal of behind-the-scenes goings on that may alter your perceptions of what was going on between 4 November 1979 and 20 January 1981. "Guests of the Ayatollah" is a highly recommended read.

I knew Mark Bowden would be one of my favorites when I read Black Hawk Down. He confirmed it for me with Guests of the Ayatollah. This man weaves words in ways that I can't describe. His writing is a fantastic glimpse into the true terror of these real life events, but written in a way that could be a page turning thriller. It is entertaining and educational. I would reccomend to anyone who likes history, has an interest in militant Islam, or just wants to read a well told story about Americans in crisis.

As always with this author's book a readble, enoyable work on a topic of interest.