Confronting Iran: The Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Next Great Crisis in the Middle East
By: Ali M. Ansari (Basic Books 2006)
Ali M. Ansari provides a concise yet comprehensive analysis of the brewing crisis, its origins, and its potential consequences. Ansari places current developments within a historical and cultural context. He describes the myths and prejudices which have developed on both sides over the course of centuries and which have shaped policy and public opinion for decades.
The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran
By: Said Amir Arjomand ((Oxford University Press 1988)
Sociologist Arjomand explains the social and political eruption in Iran in 1979 and its far-ranging implications. He argues that Iran's tradition is closely tied to Shi'te Islam, which emphasizes legitimacy of political authority and succession. As secular control of Iran increased during the 20th century, competition emerged between the Shi'te hierocracy and the Shah. As the Shah accumulated power in an attempt to counter the control of religious forces, authority became personified. Hence, with the departure of the Shah from Iran, the internal state structure disintegrated and was replaced by revolutionary religious elements.
Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution
By Nikki R. Keddie (Yale University Press 2003)
In this substantially revised and expanded version of Nikki Keddie's classic work Roots of Revolution, the author brings the story of modern Iran to the present day, exploring the political, cultural, and social changes of the past quarter century. Keddie provides insightful commentary on the Iran-Iraq war, the Persian Gulf War, and the effects of 9/11 and Iran's strategic relationship with the U.S. She also discusses developments in education, health care, the arts, and the role of women.
The Iranian Revolution - Its Global Impact
By: John L. Esposito (University Press of Florida 1990)
John L. Esposito introduces The Iranian Revolution with an explanation of why the present is a turning point for Iran. He isolates the export of Islamic revolution as central to the Republic's character. A concise description of the complexities of that issue is followed by a discussion of its effects within and outside Iran, with the majority of the collection then devoted to insightful analyses of the Republic's impact throughout the Islamic world. International experts from Iran, Europe, Africa, and the United States assess worldwide impact of the Iranian Revolution on other Muslim societies and give us a remarkable analysis of the status of Islamic revivalism in a far-flung array of Islamic statues and societies—Lebanon, Bahrain, Egypt, Tunisia, Nigeria, Turkey, the USSR, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Iraq.
Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope
By: Shirin Ebadi and Azadeh Moaveni (Random House 2006)
Millions of Iranian women were sidelined by Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, but few fought back the way Shirin Ebadi did. She had become Iran's foremost woman jurist by the 1970s, but Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's theocracy stripped her of her judgeship in 1980. Her steely tenacity enabled her to take on a new role as a human rights lawyer battling for justice in Iran's revolutionary courts -- a fight that won her the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize and brought her face to face with the terror her clients confronted.
Reinventing Khomeini The Struggle for Reform in Iran
By: Daniel Brumberg (University of Chicago Press 2001)
Reinventing Khomeini offers a new interpretation of the political battles that paved the way for reform in Iran. Brumberg argues that these conflicts did not result from a sudden ideological shift; nor did the election of President Mohammad Khatami in 1997 really defy the core principles of the Islamic Revolution. To the contrary, the struggle for a more democratic Iran can be traced to the revolution itself, and to the contradictory agendas of the revolution's founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty
By: Ali Gheissari, Vali Nasr (Oxford University Press 2006)
Few countries today appear so erratic and unknowable as Iran, where Islamist president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's increasingly militant pronouncements keep leaders awake at night from Washington to Paris. Despite President Bush's assertion that the spread of democracy will sweep away intolerance in the Muslim world, Ahmadinejad's ascent represented a sharp popular rebuke to the republic's clerical establishment. Gheissari, a history professor, and Nasr, a professor of Middle East and South Asian politics, both of whom have written widely about Iran, attempt to determine the boundaries of Tehran's democratic culture and institutions in this political and intellectual history. Their project is only partly successful, however, given the authors' persistent blind spots. They assert that "in many regards, there is more progress toward democracy in Iran than in any other country in the Middle East, perhaps with the exception of Turkey," which would be highly suspect even if one accepted the Iranian position that Israel does not exist. In their detailed dissection of Ahmadinejad's election, they make little of the fact that reformers and liberals largely boycotted the vote. Despite its flaws, Gheissari and Nasr's book offers a revealing glimpse into the paths that democratic ideas have traveled there both before and after the 1979 revolution.
We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs
By: Nasrin Alavi (Soft Skull Press November 2005)
In September 2001, a young Iranian journalist, Hossein Derakhshan, created one of the first weblogs in Farsi. When he also devised a simple how-to-blog guide for Iranians, it unleashed a torrent of hitherto unheard opinions. There are now 64,000 blogs in Farsi, and Nasrin Alavi has painstakingly reviewed them all, weaving the most powerful and provocative into a striking picture of the flowering of dissent in Iran. From one blogger's blasting of the Supreme Leader as a "pimp" to another's mourning for an identity crushed by the stifling protection of her male relatives, this collection functions not only as an archive of Iranians' thoughts on their country, culture, religion, and the rest of the world, but also as an alternative recent history of Iran.
Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America And American in Iran
By: Azadeh Moaveni (PublicAffairs 2006)
Time reporter Moaveni, the American-born child of Iranian exiles, spent two years (2000--2001) working in Tehran. Although she reports on the overall tumult and repression felt by Iranians between the 1999 pro-democracy student demonstrations and the 2002 "Axis of Evil" declaration, the book's dominant story is more intimate. Moaveni was on a personal search "to figure out my relationship" to Iran. Neither her adolescent ethnic identity conundrums nor her idyllic memories of a childhood visit prepared her for the realities she confronted as she navigated Iran, learning its rules, restrictions and taboos—and how to evade and even exploit them like a local.
My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes: Uncensored Iranian Voices
By: Lila Azam Zanganeh (Beacon Press 2006)
A seemingly devout cleaning lady sweeps a client's living room while pornography plays on the TV. A comp-lit class analyzes Milan Kundera's Identity (1998) in a translation deleting two major components, sex and gender equality. Women's clothing mannequins gradually lose their femininity, including their faces, replaced by cardboard disks, and their hands, replaced by cylinders. Of such is life in Iran's capital, Tehran, home, at least originally, of most of the artists and intellectuals contributing to this collection. Together, they raise the flag of hope for a freer culture, though the only basis they show for that hope is their and their peers' talent and integrity. Reza Aslan, author of No god but God (2005), ruefully acknowledges that, despite Tehranians' disdain for the mullahs--a taxi is as likely to run one down as pick him up, he says--many more Iranians want the "mullahcracy." Other imaginative and provocative voices herein include filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, Oscar-nominated actress Shohbeh Aghdashloo, and graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis, 2003)
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
By: Marjane Satrapi (Pantheon 2004)
Adult/High School-Marji tells of her life in Iran from the age of 10, when the Islamic revolution of 1979 reintroduced a religious state, through the age of 14 when the Iran-Iraq war forced her parents to send her to Europe for safety. This story, told in graphic format with simple, but expressive, black-and-white illustrations, combines the normal rebelliousness of an intelligent adolescent with the horrors of war and totalitarianism. Marji's parents, especially her freethinking mother, modeled a strong belief in freedom and equality, while her French education gave her a strong faith in God. Her Marxist-inclined family initially favored the overthrow of the Shah, but soon realized that the new regime was more restrictive and unfair than the last. The girl's independence, which made her parents both proud and fearful, caused them to send her to Austria. With bold lines and deceptively uncomplicated scenes, Satrapi conveys her story.
Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return
By: Marjane Satrapi (Pantheon 2005)
Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return details Marjane Satrapi's experiences as a young Iranian woman cast abroad by political turmoil in her native country. Older, if not exactly wiser, Marjane reconciles her upbringing in war-shattered Tehran with new surroundings and friends in Austria. Whether living in the company of nuns or as the sole female in a house of eight gay men, she creates a niche for herself with friends and acquaintances who feel equally uneasy with their place in the world.
Let Me Tell You Where I Have Been
By: Persis M. Karim(University of Arkansas Press 2006)
The diversity of voices represented in this stunning collection of poetry, fiction and nonfiction by women of Iranian descent shatters their narrow image in the U.S. Though none are well known, most of the 53 authors live in the U.S. and 15 have been published in journals if not books. One writes about a woman's relationship with her chador. Another remembers her desire, as a young girl, to distance herself from the "old-world values" espoused by her parents. A woman who sought refuge in Germany conveys the longing she felt to return to her birthplace by detailing a market scene and how the taste of raw walnuts made her feel at home again. Like other émigrés, the women who fled Iran after the 1979 revolution have continued to feel strong ties with their homeland. Many of those now living in the U.S., Canada or the U.K. have grappled with such feelings in an era when cars in the U.S. were emblazoned with bumper stickers reading "Iranians Go Home" and "We Play Cowboys and Iranians." Though many contributions avoid politics, several writers illustrate heartbreaking incidents of stereotyping that reveal the struggle of facing pervasive social suspicion. Touching on universal themes of love and loss, exile and longing, politics and war, this collection derives its cumulative power from its authors' subtle, uniquely female perceptions.
