During the 1980s, Kinzer covered revolutions and social upheaval in Central America, and wrote his first book, Bitter Fruit, about military coups and destabilization in Guatemala during the 1950s. In 1990, The New York Times appointed Kinzer to head its Berlin bureau,[1] from which he covered Eastern and Central Europe as they emerged from Soviet bloc. Kinzer was The New York Times chief in the newly established bureau in Istanbul (Turkey) from 1996 to 2000.[1]