We’re just here to “help”

This list critically examines the history of U.S. intervention in other countries, unpacking not only regime changes, but how it’s sold to the public. These books explore the political, economic, and strategic interests driving U.S. intervention, the manufactured consent that make it palatable at home, and the severe consequences and destabilization that inevitably follow abroad.

Ps. This is my first list so I’d appreciate any feedback & recommendations of reads to add

🇺🇸

😤

🌎

created by Yazii

last updated January, 2026

22 books

Jump to comments

The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government

David Talbot

How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

Daniel Immerwahr

Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Cocaine Explosion

Gary Webb

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Naomi Klein

The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World

Noam Chomsky

Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media

Michael Parenti

Washington Bullets

Vijay Prashad

Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient

Edward W. Said

All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror

Stephen Kinzer

A Short History of U.S. Interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean

Alan L. McPherson

Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala

Stephen C. Schlesinger

Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

Eduardo Galeano

America's Deadliest Export: Democracy – The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else

William Blum

Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs

Noam Chomsky

Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance

Noam Chomsky

Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire (American Empire Project)

Noam Chomsky

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Edward S. Herman

Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy toward Latin America

Lars Schoultz

Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq

Stephen Kinzer

The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq

Steve Coll

Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America

Walter F. LaFeber

The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

Vincent Bevins

Comments

crybabybea

whewwww, such a great list! i think if i could get everyone to understand anything about American politics it would be manufacturing consent + foreign intervention

YaziiOP

Seal of approval from Bea = day made 🥹

I completely agree. The cycle of moral justification, US intervention, then destabilization just keeps repeating itself. I threw in some Chomsky bc his work completely unraveled my naive perspective of the US from when I was younger.