Argo

Just finished reading another book.  This one, "Argo" by Antonio Mendez (if that's his real name).

The story of the rescue of six Americans from Tehran after the U.S. Embassy was taken over in November of 1979 is amazing on a couple of levels.

One: the audacity of the plan in the first place, and,

Two: the fact that I never heard a word about this.  I consider myself to be fairly well "tuned in" to the world and what's going on, but I have to admit that when this movie appeared, it was the first time I'd ever heard of this rescue.

Which is amazing because a Canadian journalist published a story on the rescue shortly after the six Americans had escaped safely to Germany in early 1980.  That story apparently was quickly spread around the world, but it didn't seem to have "legs", meaning it vanished from the news shortly thereafter.

Then in 1997, the CIA publicly acknowledged the rescue and Antonio Mendez personally, and again, the story was circulated around the world.

Somehow I missed it both times.  That's kinda spooky to me.

But regardless, it's a great story.  Anytime you are dealing with the intelligence services, you never really know how much of the story they are telling is really true, and you never really know how much has been left out.  For this book, that didn't matter.  I read the 300-odd pages in about 36 hours, with sleeping, eating and bathroom breaks in there, of course.  I can't recall the last time I read a book that quickly.  Mendez writes in a simple and fluid style which allowed me to blaze right through the book.  I highly recommend it.  It's a pretty fair history lesson to boot.

Now, to see the movie!!  So far in my short time on Earth, I have yet to find a movie that is as good as the book it was made from.  It's not surprising, really.  A typical movie lasts 90 minutes to 2 hours or so, and it takes several more hours than that to actually read a book, so....