Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future

The bestselling author of Overthrow offers a new and surprising vision for rebuilding America's strategic partnerships in the Middle East

What can the United States do to help realize its dream of a peaceful, democratic Middle East? Stephen Kinzer offers a surprising answer in this paradigm-shifting book. Two countries in the region, he argues, are America's logical partners in the twenty-first century: Turkey and Iran.

Besides proposing this new "power triangle," Kinzer also recommends that the United States reshape relations with its two traditional Middle East allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. This book provides a penetrating, timely critique of America's approach to the world's most volatile region, and offers a startling alternative.

Kinzer is a master storyteller with an eye for grand characters and illuminating historical detail. In this book he introduces us to larger-than-life figures, like a Nebraska schoolteacher who became a martyr to democracy in Iran, a Turkish radical who transformed his country and Islam forever, and a colorful parade of princes, politicians, women of the world, spies, oppressors, liberators, and dreamers.

Kinzer's provocative new view of the Middle East is the rare book that will richly entertain while moving a vital policy debate beyond the stale alternatives of the last fifty years.

Reset introduces an astonishing parade of characters: sultans, shahs, oil tycoons, mullahs, women of the world, liberators, oppressors, and dreamers of every sort. Woven together into a dazzling panorama, they help us see the Middle East in a new way—and lead to startling proposals for how the world's most volatile region might be reshaped.

In this paradigm-shifting book, Stephen Kinzer argues that the United States needs to break out of its Cold War mindset and find new partners in the Middle East. Only two Muslim countries in the Middle East have long experience with democracy: Iran and Turkey. They are logical partners for the United States. Besides proposing this new "power triangle," Kinzer tells the turbulent story of America's relations with its traditional partners in the Middle East, Israel and Saudi Arabia, and argues they must be reshaped to fit the new realities of the twenty-first century.

Kinzer's provocative new view of the Middle East—and of America's role there—will richly entertain while moving a vital policy debate beyond the stale alternatives of the last fifty years.

Stephen Kinzer is the author of Reset, Overthrow, All the Shah's Men, Crescent and Star, and numerous other books. An award-winning foreign correspondent, he served as The New York Times's bureau chief in Turkey, Germany, and Nicaragua and as The Boston Globe's Latin America correspondent. He teaches international relations at Boston University and is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and a columnist for The Guardian. He lives in Boston. Visit Stephen Kinzer's website at www.StephenKinzer.com.