Iran: A Modern History
This history of modern Iran is not a survey in the conventional sense, but an ambitious exploration of the nation that offers a revealing look at how events, people, and institutions are shaped by trends and currents that sometimes reach back hundreds of years.
Abbas Amanat
My Review:
Abbas Amanat is one of the best Iranian historians and scholars who worked on the history of Iran in the modern era. In this book, he demonstrates how the modern Iranian identity has been shaped after the conquest of Persia by Arabs and Mongols during the Safavid empire. Amanat correctly points out the factors that resulted in the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 and the Iranian Revolution in 1979 including the power of Shia clergy and their long alliance with the crown. He illustrates how the process of modernization and development has gone wrong such that the most conservative and reactionary groups came into power 45 years ago.