Category: Iranian Revolution

In August 1953, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, was overthrown in a clumsy coup d’état orchestrated by the infant Central Intelligence Agency. Veteran journalist Stephen Kinzer expertly tells this outrageous story of subterfuge in “All the Shah’s Men.” For Kinzer the episode is a cautionary tale of western meddling in Middle…

The Iranian Revolution is a fascinating subject. I’ve wanted to learn more about the events of 1978-79 for a long time, but I couldn’t find any book that was generally recognized as the objective and definitive account. I decided to pick up “The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran”…

Said Amir Arjomand has been a professor of sociology at Stony Brook University on Long Island for over forty years. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1980 just as his homeland was making its violent and chaotic transition from monarchy to theocracy. “The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in…