Creating an accurate picture of daily life in Iran is a difficult endeavor. Due to strict religious and moral codes, even photographing a woman inside her home without a scarf covering her head is all but impossible. Evidence of the censure of media in Iran has always been visible to Western nations, and has been brought to the forefront in the wake of the recent elections held there. But, Tehran has a drug problem. On the streets, in back alleys, and in small, crumbling, low-cost apartments, Iranian crack addicts are finding their fix in steadily rising numbers. The crack-a term used to describe many types of crystallized narcotics-currently flooding the streets of Tehran is different from that found in the West in a significant way: the "black crack" in Iran is made from heroin, not cocaine. Intent on documenting the plight of these masses of addicts, Aslon Arfa struck out into the underbelly of modern Tehran, camera in tow. The results of his mission, compiled here in Black Crack in Iran, are devastating images of men and women in the midst of a downfall. Some, including a young man with glazed eyes and infected burns stretching across his torso, are closer to the bottom than others. Further complicating the documentation of the epidemic are the shame of addiction, the misunderstanding and disapproval of drug use by outsiders, and the lack of trust from suffering people whose sickness is also a crime punishable by death. Yet, after months spent in the trenches, Arfa has succeeded in bringing the closed-door activities of Iran's most unseemly citizens to light in Black Crack in Iran.

Major Motion Picture based on Dark Alliance and starring Jeremy Renner, "Kill the Messenger," to be be released in Fall 2014 In August 1996, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb stunned the world with a series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News reporting the results of his year-long investigation into the roots of the crack cocaine epidemic in America, specifically in Los Angeles. The series, titled “Dark Alliance,” revealed that for the better part of a decade, a Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to Los Angeles street gangs and funneled millions in drug profits to the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras. Gary Webb pushed his investigation even further in his book, Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Drawing from then newly declassified documents, undercover DEA audio and videotapes that had never been publicly released, federal court testimony, and interviews, Webb demonstrates how our government knowingly allowed massive amounts of drugs and money to change hands at the expense of our communities. Webb’s own stranger-than-fiction experience is also woven into the book. His excoriation by the media—not because of any wrongdoing on his part, but by an insidious process of innuendo and suggestion that in effect blamed Webb for the implications of the story—had been all but predicted. Webb was warned off doing a CIA expose by a former Associated Press journalist who lost his job when, years before, he had stumbled onto the germ of the “Dark Alliance” story. And though Internal investigations by both the CIA and the Justice Department eventually vindicated Webb, he had by then been pushed out of the Mercury News and gone to work for the California State Legislature Task Force on Government Oversight. He died in 2004.

Offers new and cutting-edge research on the role of drugs in Iranian society and government. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This book gives an account of Shirley's trip into Iran as a spy to provide an insight into Iranian character. It is a vivid, firsthand portrait of the clash of Western and Muslim civilizations. The book portrays Iranians in a way different from what the most Americans know about them.

Many Americans believe that their own government is guilty of shocking crimes. Government agents shot the president. They faked the moon landing. They stood by and allowed the murders of 2,400 servicemen in Hawaii. Although paranoia has been a feature of the American scene since the birth of the Republic, in Real Enemies Kathryn Olmsted shows that it was only in the twentieth century that strange and unlikely conspiracy theories became central to American politics. In particular, she posits World War I as a critical turning point and shows that as the federal bureaucracy expanded, Americans grew more fearful of the government itself--the military, the intelligence community, and even the President. Analyzing the wide-spread suspicions surrounding such events as Pearl Harbor, the JFK assassination, Watergate, and 9/11, Olmsted sheds light on why so many Americans believe that their government conspires against them, why more people believe these theories over time, and how real conspiracies--such as the infamous Northwoods plan--have fueled our paranoia about the governments we ourselves elect. This 10th Anniversary Edition includes a new epilogue on conspiracy theories and the 2016 election and its aftermath.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • We all have dreams—things we fantasize about doing and generally never get around to. This is the story of Azar Nafisi’s dream and of the nightmare that made it come true. For two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students whom she had taught at university. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; several had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they began to open up and to speak more freely, not only about the novels they were reading but also about themselves, their dreams and disappointments. Their stories intertwined with those they were reading—Pride and Prejudice, Washington Square, Daisy Miller and Lolita—their Lolita, as they imagined her in Tehran. Nafisi’s account flashes back to the early days of the revolution, when she first started teaching at the University of Tehran amid the swirl of protests and demonstrations. In those frenetic days, the students took control of the university, expelled faculty members and purged the curriculum. When a radical Islamist in Nafisi’s class questioned her decision to teach The Great Gatsby, which he saw as an immoral work that preached falsehoods of “the Great Satan,” she decided to let him put Gatsby on trial and stood as the sole witness for the defense. Azar Nafisi’s luminous tale offers a fascinating portrait of the Iran-Iraq war viewed from Tehran and gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of women’s lives in revolutionary Iran. It is a work of great passion and poetic beauty, written with a startlingly original voice. Praise for Reading Lolita in Tehran “Anyone who has ever belonged to a book group must read this book. Azar Nafisi takes us into the vivid lives of eight women who must meet in secret to explore the forbidden fiction of the West. It is at once a celebration of the power of the novel and a cry of outrage at the reality in which these women are trapped. The ayatollahs don’ t know it, but Nafisi is one of the heroes of the Islamic Republic.”—Geraldine Brooks, author of Nine Parts of Desire

A personal journey made on one of America's most historic and defining routes-Highway 61-by one of Hollywood's finest, most gifted talents--Jessica Lange. "These photographs are a chronicle of what remains and what has disappeared. It has a long memory, Highway 61." - Jessica Lange Renowned actress and photographer Jessica Lange was raised in Northern Minnesota and has travelled the length of Highway 61 countless times since her childhood and throughout her life. This storied route originates at the Canadian border in Minnesota and runs along the great Mississippi river through the American Midwest and South, rolling through eight states, down to New Orleans. With more than 80 stunning tritone photographs, Lange's Highway 61 reveals her deep connection to this iconic route, and presents that which she has long held dear along its way. This is a tale of our shared national heritage as seen by one of the most talented artists of her generation.