The Last Shah
America, Iran, and the Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty

A great book for understanding Iran from the 40s till the present day. Some key points i've learned: - Mohammad Mossadeq the premier of Iran , the great man of the people of the 50's was not actually coup-ed by US but by his own compatriots , due to his inability to resolve the largest legal oil fiasc......more

Fascinating! I wanted to get my head around Iran a bit more given some of the headlines of late, but also to fill in some gaps left by some history books that address this period more generally/tangentially. This book was well put together, with the author chronologically documenting the Shah's rise......more

I took this one on as almost a homework assignment: didn't know much, needed to learn more. A very involved sled through the politics of Iran from the immediate post WWII period through to the Ayatollah takeover in the last 70s. So yes, happened largely in my lifetime, but beyond the oil and the hos......more

A good and balanced look at the Shah's era in Iran. Takeyh does a great job of highlighting the outsized role the US played in Iran at the time, while not making the mistake so many do of overemphasizing it. Both the 1953 coup and 1979 revolution were primarily Iranian affairs, and this book is wort......more

I picked up this book because it was reviewed in Foreign Affairs and because I knew some things about the revolution that ended the Shah's reign, but not about the man whose monarchy was ended. There's relatively little in here about the man himself, it's mostly about the key players and developments......more