Page to Screen ~ Argo

Title: Argo: How the CIA & Hollywood Pulled off the Most Audacious Rescue In History 

Author: Antonio Mendez
Copyright: 2012
Type:  fiction
Pages: 310
Series: no

Reason for Reading

Saw the movie and wanted to see if it was like the actual book

Summary:

The true account of the 1979 rescue of six American hostages from Iran

On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran and held dozens of Americans hostage, sparking a 444-day ordeal and a quake in global politics that still reverberates today. Beaneath this crisis another shocking story was known by only a select few: six Americans escaped the embassy and hid within a city roiling with suspicion and fear. A top-level CIA officer named Antonio Mendez devised an ingenious yet incredibly risky plan to rescue them before they were detected. Disguising himself as a Hollywood producer, and supported by a cast of expert forgers, deep-cover CIA operatives, foreign agents, and Hollywood special-effects artists, Mendez traveled to Tehran under the guise of scouting locations for a fake science fiction film called "Argo." While pretending to find the ideal film backdrops, Mendez and a colleague succeeded in contacting the escapees and eventually smuggled them out of Iran.

After more than three decades, Antonio Mendez finally details the extraordinarily complex and dangerous operation he led. A riveting story of secret identities, international intrigue, and good old-fashioned American ingenuity, Argo is the pulse-pounding account of the history-making collusion between Hollywood and high-stakes espionage. 

The Problems: 

* The movie clearly couldn't do everything that was in the book and of course the movie had to make it more action. 

* The book had a lot going on that didn't need to be in it. There was a lot of back information that wasn't very interesting like about what was happening during the time that hostages were hanging out waiting to be rescued and doing absolutely nothing except working on their tan. 

The Wins:

*The book did explain how the CIA got to point of using undercover with mask and makeup to help with agents and how that department was made. 

*The movie did a good job at showing how serious the situation was and is for hostages and how terrifying it was for those that went through it and those that were the ones on the outside including survival guilt. 

*It was also good to see how well and bad Hollywood was portrayed in this movie. 

Goodreads Grade: 4 out of 5 stars

Would you recommend this book to others? Yes and no I think the movie was better personally and would recommend it over the book personally but if you prefer to read then yes.