Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (rev. ed. 2005; lacks Afterword!)

(for the most up-to-date & comprehensive ed., including the 2005 Afterword, check out the 18,3mb pdf file available in z-library!)
Bitter Fruit is a comprehensive and insightful account of the CIA operation to overthrow the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954. First published in 1982, this book has become a classic, a textbook case of the relationship between the United States and the Third World. The authors make extensive use of U.S. government documents and interviews with former CIA and other officials. It is a warning of what happens when the United States abuses its power.
Stephen Kinzer takes a journalistic approach to this story, mixing hard bitten backroom dealing in both Washington and Guatemala City with history and corporate affairs. Dulles and Eisenhower are two of the American instigators, as well as the US ambassador to Guatemala and the US representative to the United Nations, to name just a few. Many of the coup backers state-side eventually wound up working for the United Fruit company a few years after the fact.