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The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation
From the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Lawrence in Arabia, a stunningly revelatory narrative history of one of the most momentous events in modern times, the jaw-dropping stupidity of the American government, and the dawn of the age of religious nationalism.
On New Year's Eve, 1977, on a state visit to Iran, President Jimmy Carter toasted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, King of Kings, Light of the Aryans, Shadow of God on Earth, praising Iran as "an island of stability " due to "your leadership and the respect and admiration and love which your people give to you." Iran had the world's fifth largest army and was awash in billions of dollars in oil revenues. Construction cranes dotted the skyline of its booming capital, Tehran. The regime's feared secret police force SAVAK had crushed communist opposition, and the Shah had bought off the conservative Muslim clergy inside the country. He seemed invulnerable, and invaluable to the United States as an ally in the Cold War. Fourteen months later the Shah fled Iran into exile, forced from the throne by a volcanic religious revolution led by a fiery cleric named Ayatollah Khomeini. The ensuing hostage crisis forever damaged America's standing in the world. How could the United States, which had one of the largest CIA stations in the world and thousands of military personnel in Iran, have been so blind?
The spellbinding story Scott Anderson weaves is one of a dictator blind to the disdain of his subjects and a superpower blundering into disaster. Scott Anderson tells this astonishing tale with the narrative brio, mordant wit, and keen analysis that made his bestselling Lawrence of Arabia one of the key texts in understanding the modern Middle East. The Iranian Revolution, Anderson convincingly argues, was as world-shattering an event as the French and Russian revolutions. In the Middle East, in India, in Southeast Asia, in Europe, and now in the United States, the hatred of economically-marginalized, religiously-fervent masses for a wealthy secular elite has led to violence and upheaval – and Iran was the template. King of Kings is a bravura work of history, and a warning.
2025 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalists
Here's the list of the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award finalists. Which have you read and which are standouts? Are there any you'd like to add to your list that you haven't already? Autobiography/Memoir : Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks (Viking) Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy ...
-kim.kovacs
What’s the best nonfiction book you read in 2025?
King of Kings : The Iranian Revolution - a Story of Hubris , Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation by Scott Anderson Especially timely with the protests and crackdown now occurring in Iran, and the U.S. pronouncements . This is not a history of the Iranian Revolution of the 1970's but rather a...
-Pegeen_B
Kirkus finalists announced!
I always hope that one of the books I've read will be a winner. Not sure why that is, unless it's an attempt to control my ever-expanding TBR list. ("Whew! There's one I don't have to read!") Not so this year. The winners are: Fiction: https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/5027...
-kim.kovacs
"An eye-opening history of how Iran became a point on the 'axis of evil' and is considered such a dangerous enemy today." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Chaos is strewn by foolhardy leaders acting on bad information in this riveting history of the Iranian revolution....Anderson's story builds a rushing momentum as one miscalculation after another hurtles the country toward the 1979 'revolution few saw coming and no one knew how to stop.' The result is an illuminating, operatic depiction of the revolution as a farcical cavalcade of arrogant mistakes with dire consequences."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"As Anderson lays out with meticulous reporting and consummate storytelling, many of Iran's spectacular gains—and along with them, its once-inviolable alliance with the U.S.—came undone with the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the ascent of Ayatollah Khomeini....Though the Iranian Revolution unfolded more than 45 years ago, the now-fraught U.S.-Iran relationship remains front and center, and there are still hard-won lessons to glean about the costs of inattention." —Booklist (starred review)
"Instantly absorbing, King of Kings is an exhilarating plunge into the psychology of unchecked power, which secludes, blinds, and ultimately betrays its holders. Anderson is a master of the telling detail; he gives us lessons not only from the Shah's undoing but also from Washington's weakness for rigid assumptions—until history, as it so often does, shatters the illusion of control." —Evan Osnos, author of the National Book Award winner Age of Ambition
"Anderson's brilliant new account of the events leading to the shah's fall is both masterful and mesmerizing. With bracing clarity, drawing from interviews with direct participants, King of Kings shows senior Iranian and U.S. officials sleepwalking into a disaster with global consequences—and one that was far from inevitable. A must-read for anyone looking to understand the origins of the Middle East's most dangerous regime." —Joby Warrick, author of Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction
This information about King of Kings was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: © Robert Clark
Scott Anderson is a veteran war correspondent who has reported from Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Northern Ireland, Chechnya, Sudan, Bosnia, El Salvador and many other strife-torn countries. A frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine, his work has also appeared in Vanity Fair, Esquire, Harper's and Outside. He is the author of novels Moonlight Hotel and Triage and of non-fiction books The Man Who Tried to Save the World and The 4 O'Clock Murders, and co-author of War Zones and Inside The League with his brother Jon Lee Anderson.
If you liked King of Kings, try these:
by Scott Anderson
Published 2021
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