
It is far too early to draw any hard conclusions about the ongoing uprising in Iran, but one thing seems clear enough: Once again, Iran has confounded the expectations and assumptions of many a Western Iran expert when it comes to what Iranians want, what they are prepared to do to get it, and how their leaders respond to unprecedented events. All the more reason then to encourage the study of Iran's politics, economy, society, history, and literature. Below, in no particular order, are a selection of books that will get you started in understanding the intriguing, elusive, and wondrous puzzle that is Iran:
1. Janet Afary, Sexual Politics in Modern Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Afary does a spectacular job explaining, as well as detailing, sexual attitudes and practices from the 19th to the 21st century. Her account gives an excellent feel for how Iranian society works and how that has changed under the impact of modern times. Plus, her detailed research makes the account much more credible than some of the highly readable stories from Iranian-Americans about personal life in modern Iran.
2. Arang Keshavarzian, Bazaar and State in Iran: The Politics of the Tehran Marketplace (Cambridge University Press, 2007). Keshavarzian shows how the bazaar exercised its political and economic influence under the shah. He then lays out the paradox that the revolution in which the bazaar was so central brought in a government that has systematically weakened the bazaar to the point that the bazaar is no longer a significant political player. His style is at times a bit dense, but Keshavarzian is no obscurantist academic: He provides lots of colorful details.
3. Manucher Farmanfarmaian and Roxane Farmanfarmaian, Blood and Oil: Memoirs of a Persian Prince, (Random House, 1997). The Farmanfarmaians paint in rich detail how the Pahlavi dynasty changed Iran from a very traditional society into a complicated semimodern one. They use their family's story as a way to weave in the political and intellectual history of Iran from the 1940s through the 1970s.
4. Yonah Alexander and Milton Hoenig, The New Iranian Leadership: Ahmadinejad, Terrorism, Nuclear Ambition, and the Middle East (Praeger Security International, 2008). The prolific Alexander has edited some less-than-stellar books, but this volume is a first-rate reference manual for those wanting the dates, numbers, and other facts about Iran's nuclear, missile, chemical, and terrorist programs. No one in his right mind would read the book from page 1 to the end, but it's a great reference source.
5. Peter Chelkowski and Hamid Dabashi, Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the Islamic Republic of Iran, (New York University Press, 1999). Perhaps the best book to give a feel of the 1979 Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War, with hundreds of wonderful color reproductions of the propaganda -- from postage stamps to agitprop plays to the ubiquitous political posters. Great fun to flip through, and the text is well worth reading.
6. John Parker, Persian Dreams: Moscow and Tehran Since the Fall of the Shah, (Potomac Books, 2009). Admittedly a bit specialized topic, but a superb analysis of how Iran looks from Moscow. It provides rich detail of how Russian domestic politics shapes Moscow's interest in and perception of the Islamic Republic. Parker brings out how different are Western and Russian narratives about Iran: They have entirely varying reads on what have been the significant turning points and what matters most in Iran's foreign policy.
7. Richard Tapper, editor, The New Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation and Identity, (I.B. Tauris, 2002). These 14 essays situate the fascinating Iranian film industry in its cultural, social, and political settings. The essay authors provide enough reviews of individual films to bring their points to life, but their focus is very definitely on the sociopolitical rather than artistic aspects of Iranian film.
8. And of course, for anyone who loves literature, Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (Random House, 2003) is a rewarding account of those who are so deeply committed to great books that they can overcome the tremendous obstacles to free intellectual life under the Islamic Republic.
BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images
Patrick Clawson is deputy director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos.
The 8 books Uncle Sam doesn't want you to read
1. All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror
by Stephen Kinzer
1. All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror
With breezy storytelling and diligent research, Kinzer has reconstructed the CIA's 1953 overthrow of the elected leader of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, who was wildly popular at home for having nationalized his country's oil industry. The coup ushered in the long and brutal dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah, widely seen as a U.S. puppet and himself overthrown by the Islamic revolution of 1979. At its best this work reads like a spy novel, with code names and informants, midnight meetings with the monarch and a last-minute plot twist when the CIA's plan, called Operation Ajax, nearly goes awry. A veteran New York Times foreign correspondent and the author of books on Nicaragua (Blood of Brothers) and Turkey (Crescent and Star), Kinzer has combed memoirs, academic works, government documents and news stories to produce this blow-by-blow account. He shows that until early in 1953, Great Britain and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company were the imperialist baddies of this tale. Intransigent in the face of Iran's demands for a fairer share of oil profits and better conditions for workers, British Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison exacerbated tension with his attitude that the challenge from Iran was, in Kinzer's words, "a simple matter of ignorant natives rebelling against the forces of civilization." Before the crisis peaked, a high-ranking employee of Anglo-Iranian wrote to a superior that the company's alliance with the "corrupt ruling classes" and "leech-like bureaucracies" were "disastrous, outdated and impractical." This stands as a textbook lesson in how not to conduct foreign policy.
2. JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy
by L. Fletcher Prouty
Prouty, who was a Washington insider for nearly 20 years--in the last few of them as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Kennedy--has a highly unusual perspective to offer on the assassination and the events that led up to it. Familiar to moviegoers as the original of the anonymous Washington figure, played by Donald Sutherland in the Oliver Stone's movie JFK , who asks hero Jim Garrison to ponder why Kennedy was killed, Prouty leaves no doubt where he stands. The president, he claims, had angered the military-industrial establishment with his procurement policies and his determination to withdraw from Vietnam, and had threatened to break the CIA into "a thousand pieces" after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. His death was in effect a coup d'etat that placed in the White House a very different man with a very different approach--one much more acceptable to what Prouty consistently calls "the power elite." Although he declares that such an elite has operated, supranationally, throughout history, and is all-powerful, he never satisfactorily explains who its members are and how it functions--or how it has allowed the current East-West rapprochement to take place. Still, this behind-the-scenes look at how the CIA has shaped postwar U.S. foreign policy is fascinating, as are Prouty's telling questions about the security arrangements in Dallas, his knowledge of the extraordinary government movements at that time (every member of the Cabinet was out of the country when Kennedy was shot) and his perception that most of the press has joined in the cover-up ever since.
3. The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World
by L. Fletcher Prouty
Colonel Prouty's book on the Secret Team should be required reading for all concerned Americans. Herein, the author, a retired Air Force Colonel and CIA insider, reveals for all to see the machinations of the Secret Team and their impact on US history in the post World War II era. This is terribly important information.
I was particularly impressed with Prouty's depiction of Eisenhower's peace initiative and how it was sabatoged by the Secret Team. Ike was preparing for his peace summit with Kruschev when Gary Powers was sent off on his fool's errand on April 30th, 1960, a date with significant occult emblematics. The capture of Powers by the Soviets effectively scuttled the Eisenhower peace plan, which would have ruined the plans of the Secret Team, for continued Cold War tension, and treasure for the merchants of venom.
The essential truths in this important book are still relevant today. Of course, the ineffectual George Walker Bush is not entirely in charge of American foreign policy in this critical time. He is certainly still being manipulated by the sucessors of the Secret Team depicted in this excellent and well written book. Any serious student of American foreign policy in the post World War II era ought to read this important book.
4. 9/11: The Ultimate Truth
by Laura Knight-Jadczyk & Joe Quinn
In the years since the 9/11 attacks, dozens of books have sought to explore the truth behind the official version of events that day - yet to date, none of these publications has provided a satisfactory answer as to WHY the attacks occurred and who was ultimately responsible for carrying them out.
Taking a broad, millennia-long perspective, Laura Knight-Jadczyk's 9/11: The Ultimate Truth uncovers the true nature of the ruling elite on our planet and presents new and ground-breaking insights into just how the 9/11 attacks played out.
9/11: The Ultimate Truth makes a strong case for the idea that September 11, 2001 marked the moment when our planet entered the final phase of a diabolical plan that has been many, many years in the making. It is a plan developed and nurtured by successive generations of ruthless individuals who relentlessly exploit the negative aspects of basic human nature to entrap humanity as a whole in endless wars and suffering in order to keep us confused and distracted to the reality of the man behind the curtain.
Drawing on historical and genealogical sources, Knight-Jadczyk eloquently links the 9/11 event to the modern-day Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She also cites the clear evidence that our planet undergoes periodic natural cataclysms, a cycle that has arguably brought humanity to the brink of destruction in the present day.
For its no nonsense style in cutting to the core of the issue and its sheer audacity in refusing to be swayed or distracted by the morass of disinformation that has been employed by the Powers that Be to cover their tracks, 9/11: The Ultimate Truth can rightly claim to be THE definitive book on 9/11 - and what that fateful day's true implications are for the future of mankind.
The new Second Edition of 9/11: The Ultimate Truth has been updated with new material detailing the real reasons for the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, the central role played by agents of the state of Israel in the attacks, and how the arrogant Bush government is now forced to dance to the Zionists' tune.
5. Political Ponerology: The Scientific Study of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes
by Andrew Lobaczewski
The first manuscript of this book went into the fire five minutes before the arrival of the secret police in Communist Poland. The second copy, reassembled painfully by scientists working under impossible conditions of repression, was sent via a courier to the Vatican. Its receipt was never acknowledged, no word was ever heard from the courier - the manuscript and all the valuable data was lost. The third copy was produced after one of the scientists working on the project escaped to America in the 1980s. Zbigniew Brzezinski suppressed it.
Political Ponerology: The scientific study of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes was forged in the crucible of the very subject it studies. Scientists living under an oppressive regime decide to study it clinically, to study the founders and supporters of an evil regime to determine what common factor is at play in the rise and propagation of man's inhumanity to man.
Shocking in its clinically spare descriptions of the true nature of evil, poignant in the more literary passages where the author reveals the suffering experienced by the researchers who were contaminated or destroyed by the disease they were studying, this is a book that should be required reading by every citizen of every country that claims a moral or humanistic foundation. For it is a certainty that morality and humanism cannot long withstand the predations of Evil. Knowledge of its nature, how it creates its networks and spreads, how insidious is its guileful approach, is the only antidote.
6. Behold a Pale Horse
by William Cooper
Behold a Pale Horse is definitely not a book to curl up on the couch with on a Sunday afternoon. The topics William Cooper discusses will very likely keep you reading late into the night. There are two types of people in the world: those who want to know who exactly is controlling whom, and those who are more comfortable taking things at face value. I will say up front that I didn't believe everything I read in this book, such as some of the references about UFOs. What really disturbed me was the theory of the true intent of the government. Cooper's account of what the government is capable of in times of heightened alert is extremely relevant now. It is important to keep in mind that this book was published before the attack on the World Trade Center because the US is finding itself in exactly the position Cooper predicted. Whether or not you think you might agree with the information in this book, I recommend any book written by someone who was killed for the purpose of silencing him or her. Be an informed citizen and know what your government is capable of.
7. UFOs and the National Security State
by Richard Dolan
This is without a doubt the best book ever written on UFO'S. It not only chronicles the same old disc shape sightings, abductions, encounters and cattle mutilations that we all have probably heard or read about. But Dolan goes into depth as to the who, why and history of our government agencies and the great lenghts they have gone to downplay, mis-inform, lie, threaten, kill, and debunk the existence of UFO'S that are, in turn,controlled by extraterrestrials. It becomes obvious, in the books content, that the government has gone the full mile and more to coverup and downplay this existence, because in truth, we have yet to develop a formidable military or technological defense for this higher intellegence that has been observing us for who knows how long. Dolan takes you every where from the foo fighters, to the CIA'S use of mind altering drugs, countless clandestine activities and heavy envolement in UFO'S, Roswell,the Hill abduction, the importance of Keyhole & Macdonald, Men in Black, the debacle of Project Blue Book, the mysterious death of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI's historical role on UFO's, Watergate, Nixon and finally the government's success at keeping the UFO situation under it's own propaganda control. One can conclude at books end, that the government may be trying to avoid mass hysteria by this ongoing coverup but in the process has only made matters worse. But as Dolan says, is it in the public interest or their interest?
8. The Cosmic Winter
Victor Clube & Bill Napier
"The Cosmic Winter" is the one of the most important works by Clube and Napier, close to as being an expansion of their first book, The Cosmic Serpent. In "The Cosmic Winter," with 280 pages and seventeen chapters, the authors bring forth the role of impact events in creating the cosmic "winters" and the further discussion of the mythological sky gods as evidence of comets in our prehistory era and a look at cometary events towards the present era.
As one first read the beginning of this book in a prologue chapter, there will be an experience of a fictional encounter between the Earth and a cometary bombardment and how the United States government would react. Then, the authors pointed out that "a great illusion of cosmic security thus envelopes mankind, one that the 'establishment' of Church, State and Academe do nothing to disturb. Persistence in such an illusion will do nothing to alleviate the next Dark Age when it arrives" (p 12-3). There's nothing further from the truth!
There are three parts of this book, with first part being concerned with the mythologies as the history of comets, such as "sky gods" were being comets in disguises. And, they were seen by ancient human beings in our prehistory periods and they may have misinterpreted these comets as "gods." Towards the end of this first part, the authors stated that "swarms of asteroids periodically exist in Earth-crossing orbits and that these are responsible for producing an erratic sequence of cosmic winters, sudden coolings of the globe" (p. 127), which is important to keep in mind.
The Part Two reveals the essential scientific knowledge about the comets and how they can be the cause of "terrestrial" catastrophe as well a look at the periodic meteoroid streams (where Earth passes through late June and Early November annually). The authors further their discussion on Comet Encke, the Tunguska event of 1908, ancient comets as depicted in Chinese records (e.g., symbols), and more on historical comets in our prehistory yet they were being ignored. The authors also mentioned that "our distant ancestors...have been telling us in simple language that celestial catastrophe has struck, probably more than once, but the message has been lost through the ravages of time" (p. 192).
The final part of this book brings more focus on the scientific evidence of the cosmic events, such as geological, sea-level variations, fossil, ice cores, iridium, Earth's magnetic field, and the cratering record. And, the final chapter brings home a point of how serious a cosmic impact hazard really is and how likely that our civilization would be "plunged into a New Dark Age." Will the human race become extinct?
This book became very difficult to obtain and one has to wonder why there are such a shortage of copies of this most important work, and it is a must read for everyone.
The authors ended "The Cosmic Winter" with one very simple yet most critical line:
"There is a need for this book."
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