To the inside story of the 1979 Iranian seizure of the U.S. embassy and personnel, which includes memoirs by policymakers, military and intelligence officials, and captives, add this account about the Canadian ambassador in Tehran, Kenneth Taylor. It’s generally known that he facilitated the escape from Iran of several American diplomats but not in the detail imparted by Wright. From interviews with Taylor and other Canadians and from extant material about the crisis, Wright crafts an informative narrative of Taylor’s formal protests of the egregious violation of international diplomacy that the embassy invasion represented and his surreptitious succor to the Americans. The latter consisted of Canadians casing the embassy for a rescue mission, hiding a group of Americans who had eluded the embassy takeover, and providing forged Canadian passports for them. The fakes’ use in the escape was recounted in a colorful CIA memoir, Antonio Mendez’s The Master of Disguise (1999). Wright’s spotlight on the courageous Canadian role in hoodwinking the kidnappers will also interest readers of Mark Bowden’s Guests of the Ayatollah (2006)