Stephen Kinzer is a United States author and newspaper reporter. He is a veteran New York Times correspondent who has reported from more than fifty countries on five continents. During the 1980s he covered revolution and social upheaval in Central America. In 1990, he was promoted to bureau chief of the Berlin bureau and covered the growth of Eastern and Central Europe as they emerged from Soviet rule. He was also New York Times bureau chief in Istanbul (Turkey) from 1996 to 2000. He currently teaches journalism and United States foreign policy at Northwestern University.
Kinzer has written several non-fiction books about Turkey, Central America, Iran, the US overthrow of foreign governments from the late 19th century to the present and, most recently, about Rwanda's recovery from genocide. He has spoken out widely against a potential U.S. attack on Iran, warning that it would destroy the pro-US sentiment that has become widespread among the Iranian populace under the repressive Islamic regime. He is a fierce opponent of US foreign policy toward Latin America. In a 2010 interview with Imagineer Magazine, he stated:
The effects of U.S. intervention in Latin America have been overwhelming negative. They have had the effect of reinforcing brutal and unjust social systems and crushing people who are fighting for what we would actually call “American values.” In many cases, if you take Chile, Guatemala, or Honduras for examples, we actually overthrew governments that had principles similar to ours and replaced those democratic, quasi-democratic, or nationalist leaders with people who detest everything the United States stands for.
Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, with Stephen Schlesinger; Doubleday, 1982; revised ed. Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-07590-0
Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001, ISBN 0-374-13143-0
An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, John Wiley & Sons, 2003, ISBN 0-471-26517-9
America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, Times Books, 2006, ISBN 0-8050-7861-4
Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua, with a new afterword, Harvard University Press, 2007, ISBN 0-674-02593-8
A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It, John Wiley & Sons, 2008, ISBN 978-0-470-12015-6
Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future, Times Books, 2010, ISBN 978-0805091274