r/coldwar

Do you guys have any good books about the coldwar

I’m a progressive who’s been lately coming into terms that most of the online left is largely just anti-America and anti-west and that they hold onto narratives that are often twisted if not outright false.

One of these narratives is about how pretty much everything wrong in the world is because of American imperialism, which is of course tightly related to the topic of the Cold War.

There are narratives like that Iranians chant “Death to America” because of American backed coup that toppled Mohammed Mosaddegh in 1953 and that South America is behind North America because the US toppled or supported toppling of any leftist leader that gets elected like Jacobo Arbénz in Guatemala in 1954, Joao Goulart in Brazil in 1964, Salvador Allende in Chile or Isabel Perón in Argentina (both in 1973), etc.

I follow subreddit called r/NewIran, where I learned that the story about the toppling of Mosaddegh is largely an anti-American myth, because:

A. He was no good guy. He was a populist who took advantage of Iranian population’s ignorance of oil and its extremely low literacy rate to become a dictator.

B. He was about to put Iran under Soviet sphere of influence and the Cold War was all about keeping Soviet Union from getting too powerful.

C. Despite the narrative that he was toppled because he wouldn’t let the UK and the US have Iranian oil, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi actually didn’t let the West loot Iran dry. He kept oil partially nationalized and used its revenues to develop Iran.

What about other regime changes that America was involved in throughout the Cold War? Is the idea that the US is an evil empire responsible for all the ills in the world to enrich itself just an anti western propaganda meant to empower authoritarian socialists and Islamists?

What is there to say about these leftist leaders that were toppled during that era?