Schlesinger's book, "Bitter Fruit" (1982), co-authored with Stephen Kinzer, about the 1954 US coup in Guatemala, garnered remarkable attention. Jim Miller in "Newsweek" wrote that "Schlesinger's and Kinzer's meticulously documented history reads like a cloak-and-dagger thriller..." Warren Hoge in "The Sunday New York Times Book Review" called it "a tale of dirty tricks, the manipulation of public opinion, the smearing of the precious few journalists who managed to sense what was really going on and of foreign policy that borrowed more from Doonesbury than diplomacy." The book is considered a classic study of American interventionism abroad and has sold more than 100,000 copies.