The Shah's Party colorfully captures Iran's oil-rich boom years. In 1971, eight years before the dynasty fell, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his glamorous wife, Farah Diba, hosted one of the largest gatherings of world leaders ever, celebrating the 2,500th anniversary of the Persian monarchy. But this stranger-than-fiction event, staged in a tented city by the ancient ruins of Persepolis, came amidst a rise in leftist agitation and a turn towards political Islam. Ruhollah Khomeini, an exi...

Pulitzer Prize Finalist: "Hansen's principal injunction to Americans to understand how others view them and their country's policies is timely and urgent." — The Washington PostWinner of the Overseas Press Club of America's Cornelius Ryan AwardA New York Times Notable BookNamed a Best Book of the Year by New York Magazine and The ProgressiveIn the wake of the September 11 attacks and th...

“Riveting . . . This thorough work is immensely detailed yet readable and continuously engaging.” —Publishers WeeklyAn immersive, gripping account of the rise and fall of Iran's glamorous Pahlavi dynasty, written with the cooperation of the late Shah's widow, Empress Farah, Iranian revolutionaries and US officials from the Carter administration.In this remarkably human portrait of one of the twentieth century's most complicated per...

A masterful account of the assassins who hunted down the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide set in the context of Ottoman and Armenian history."A dramatic work of history that reads like a thriller." —Michael Bobelian, Los Angeles TimesIn 1921, a tightly knit band of killers set out to avenge the deaths of almost one million victims of the Armenian Genocide. They were a humble bunch: an accountant, a life insurance salesman, a new...

"A digestible history of this tortured land is something Americans sorely need. . . . Polk carefully constructs one." ― USA TodayWilliam R. Polk provides an informative, readable history of a country which is moving quickly toward becoming the dominant power and culture of the Middle East. A former member of the State Department's Policy Planning Council, Polk describes a country and a history misunderstood by many in the West. While Irani...

The definitive, "splendidly detailed" biography of the last Shah of Iran, tracing his dramatic rise, dictatorial rule, and fall from power in 1979 ( Chicago Tribune).Though his monarchy was toppled in 1979 and he died in 1980, the life of Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, continues to resonate today. Here, internationally respected author Abbas Milani gives us the definitive biography, more than ten years in the making, of the monarch whose...

**A stunning exploration of the Greater Middle East, where lasting stability has often seemed just out of reach but may hold the key to the shifting world order of the twenty-first century“Engaging . . . Even those who resist Kaplan’s tragic sensibility have much to learn from his look at the emerging Middle East and its recent history.”—National ReviewFINALIST FOR THE OVERSEAS PRESS CLUB’S CORNELIUS RYAN AWARD**The Greater Middle East, which Robert D. Kapl...

The inspiration for the Netflix series premiering March 3rd"Hugely enjoyable, magnificently researched, and deeply absorbing." —Jason Goodwin, New York Times Book ReviewAt midnight, December 31, 1925, citizens of the newly proclaimed Turkish Republic celebrated the New Year. For the first time ever, they had agreed to use a nationally unified calendar and clock.Yet in Istanbul—an ancient crossroads and Turkey's largest city—people were looki...

A masterfully researched and compelling history of Iran from 1501 to 2009This history of modern Iran is not a survey in the conventional sense but an ambitious exploration of the story of a nation. It offers a revealing look at how events, people, and institutions are shaped by currents that sometimes reach back hundreds of years. The book covers the complex history of the diverse societies and economies of Iran against the background of dynastic changes, revolutio...

Bernard Lewis looks at the new era in the Middle East. With the departure of imperial powers, the region must now, on its own, resolve the political, economic, cultural, and societal problems that prevent it from accomplishing the next stage in the advance of civilization. There is enough in the traditional culture of Islam on the one hand and the modern experience of the Muslim peoples on the other, he explains, to provide the basis for an advance toward freedom in the true sense of that ...

Turkish culture and history is explored in the wide-ranging series that is "like a literary vacation" ( Publishers Weekly).The birth of the "New Turkey," as the country's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called his own creation, is an exemplary story of the rise of "illiberal democracies" through the erosion of civil liberties, press freedom, and the independence of the judicial system. Turkey was a complex country long before the rise of its new sultan: ...

**The definitive history of Iran, from the ancient Persian empires to today.“Michael Axworthy’s deft untangling of the country’s history, from the advent of Zoroastrianism to the 1979 revolution, is a stunning achievement.” ―Guardian**Iran is a land of contradictions. It is an Islamic republic, but one in which only 1.4 percent of the population attend Friday prayers. Iran’s religious culture encompasses the most censorious and dogmatic Shi’a Muslim clerics in the ...