Choice Review

Houghton has produced an excellent, in-depth study of the Iranian hostage crisis, making outstanding use of new material about policy/decision makers' perceptions. He goes deep into the perceptions of American decision makers (with some new material on the Iranian side) and focuses on the use of analogies and how they shape people's perceptions. He has done for analogies what Bob Jervis did for images in his 1970 The Logic of Images in International Relations. In the process, Houghton has also produced a readable and updated narrative of US-Iranian relations through this period. He has also done something important that too few authors do: he has assessed his view of the use of historical analogies in terms of alternative explanations such as pressure from external factors and the international system, realism, domestic politics, bureaucratic politics, groupthink, rational decision making, and prospect theory. He concludes that analogy reinforces most of these theoretical perspectives and is part of the baggage all policy makers carry. He ends with a description of the Iranian hostage crisis as an analogy for future actions. A superb book. J. D. Stempel University of Kentucky