Iran's Mohammad Mosaddegh and Georgia's Zviad Gamsakhurdia were two of the most consequential national leaders of the twentieth century. Nicolas Gorjestani examines, in two separate volumes, each leader's life story, resistance strategy, governance, reform record, and overthrow. The two books combine insightful memoir, strategic analysis, economic assessment, and historical review to weave a compelling narrative that gives the reader a front-row seat to the transformational events that unfolded in Iran in the 1950s and Georgia in the 1990s. The similarities between these two patriots are remarkable: their personal background, vision, governing philosophy, political destiny, and legacy. With courage, passion, and tenacity, they took on domestic establishment elites to fight against authoritarian or arbitrary rule. Both leaders shared a vision of a modern, democratic state, and, to that end, undertook pathbreaking political and socio-economic reforms. They also challenged the world powers to end colonial domination of Iran and Georgia and to reestablish national sovereignty. Mosaddegh (Book 1) locked horns with Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower in 1951-1953 over the nationalization of Iran's oil industry, while Gamsakhurdia (Book 2) stood up to Mikhail Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush in 1990-1991 over independence from the Soviet Union. Their governance was cut short as both leaders were overthrown in similar paramilitary coups. Mosaddegh was toppled in the first post-WWII regime change organized and supported by the British MI6 and American CIA; Gamsakhurdia was deposed in the first regime change in the former Soviet space supported by the Soviet military. Nicolas Gorjestani is a former senior official of the World Bank with economic development experience spanning more than four decades in countries undergoing transformational change. The result of decades-long study and research utilizing multiple primary sources, these two books provide a unique perspective based not only on the author's professional experience but also on his intimate knowledge of both Iran and Georgia. Born in Iran of Georgian heritage, Gorjestani has maintained cultural links with both countries, and followed their political economy for more than half a century. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Mohammad Mosaddeq is widely regarded as the leading champion of secular democracy and resistance to foreign domination in Iran's modern history. Mosaddeq became prime minister of Iran in May 1951 and promptly nationalized its British-controlled oil industry, initiating a bitter confrontation between Iraq and Britain that increasingly undermined Mossaddeq's position. He was finally overthrown in August 1953 in a coup d'etat that was organized and led by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. This coup initiated a twenty-five-year period of dictatorship in Iran, leaving many Iranians resentful of the U.S. legacies that still haunt relations between the two countries today. Contents include: "Mosaddeq's Government in Iranian History: Arbitrary Rule, Democracy, and the 1953 Coup" - Homa Katouzian; "Unseating Mosaddeq: The Configuration and Role of Domestic Forces" - Fakhreddin Azimi; "The 1953 Coup in Iran and the Legacy of the Tudeh" - Maziar Behrooz; "Great Britain and the Intervention in Iran, 1953" - Wm. Roger Louis; "The International Boycott of Iranian Oil and the Anti-Mossaddeq Coup of 1953" - Mary Ann Heiss; "The Road to Intervention: Factors Influencing U.S. Policy Toward Iran, 1945-1953" - Malcolm Byrne; "The 1953 Coup d'etat Against Mosaddeq" - Mark J. Gasiorowski

This is the first full-length account of the CIA's coup d'etat in Iran in 1953—a covert operation whose consequences are still with us today. Written by a noted New York Times journalist, this book is based on documents about the coup (including some lengthy internal CIA reports) that have now been declassified. Stephen Kinzer's compelling narrative is at once a vital piece of history, a cautionary tale, and a real-life espionage thriller.

In an attempt to explain the seemingly a priori antagonisms of the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War, Natural Enemies stands apart from previous literature on the topic. Looking at modern European history and the rise of the United States as a super-power, Robert C. Grogin contends that the Cold War eventually arose out of the clash of two ideologically motivated political systems. Grogin helps us see how the conflict between an American, Wilsonian-inspired politics and Soviet Leninist ideology developed into a gulf that was bound to be antagonistic from the start. The various postwar crises and failed attempts at detente frame this struggle, as Grogin charts the geopolitical trajectory of the conflict until its final dissolution. With an eye toward understanding the impact of this period on subsequent world events, Natural Enemies presents an integrated and original interpretation of Cold War history.

Misagh Parsa develops a structural theory of the causes and outcomes of revolution, applying the theory in particular to Iran. He focuses on the ends and means of various groups of Iranians before, during, and after the revolution. For Parsa, revolution is not a direct result of ideologies, which may be less important than structural factors such as the nature of the state and the economy, as well as each group's interests, capacity for mobilization, autonomy, and solidarity structures. Existing theories of revolution explain earlier revolutions better than the Iranian revolution. In Iran most of the protest was in urban areas, the peasants never played a major role, and power was transferred to the clergy, not to an intelligentsia. In the 1970s, oil revenues increased, the economy developed rapidly but unevenly, and the state's expanded intervention undermined market forces and politicized capital accumulation. Systematic repression of workers, aid to the upper class, and attacks on secular and religious opposition showed that the state was serving the interests of particular groups. When the state tried to check high inflation by imposing price controls on bazaaris (merchants, shopkeepers, artisans), their protests forced the state to introduce reforms, providing an opportunity for industrial workers, white-collar workers, intellectuals, and the clergy to mobilize against the state. Thus, structural features rendered the state vulnerable to challenge and attack. Parsa's thorough explanation of the collective actions of each major group in Iran in the three decades prior to the revolution shows how a coalition of classes and groups, using mosques as safe gathering places and led by a segment of the clergy, brought down the monarch of 1979. In the years since the revolution, the conflicts that existed before the revolution seem to be reemerging, in slightly altered form. The clergy now has control, and the state has become centrally and powerfully involved in the economy of the country.

Life in Iran as an artist under the Shah and during the Iranian Revolution A Man of the Theater tells the personal story of a theater artist caught between the two great upheavals of Iranian history in the 20th century. One is the White Revolution of the 1960s, the incomplete and uneven modernization imposed from the top by the dictatorial regime of the Shah, coming in the wake of the overthrow of the popular Mosaddegh government with the help of the CIA. The other one is the Iranian Revolution of 1979, a great rising of Iranian society against the rule of the Shah in which Khomeini’s Islamist faction ends up taking power. Written in a simple direct style, Rahmaninejad’s memoir describes his fraught creative life in Tehran during these decades, founding a theater company and directing plays under the increasing pressure of the censorship authorities and the Shah’s secret police. After being arrested and tortured by the SAVAK and after spending years in Tehran’s infamous Evin prison and being a cause célèbre of Amnesty International, Rahmaninejad is freed by the Revolution of 1979. But his new-found freedom is short-lived; the progressive intellectuals and artists find themselves overpowered and outmaneuvered by the better organized Islamists, leading to renewed terror and to exile. In Western perception, the Iranian Revolution, which this year has its 40th anniversary, often overshadows the decades of Iran’s modern history that preceded it. A Man of the Theater fills this gap. The title derives from a time of torture in prison when interrogators ordered him to write everything about his activities. To avoid revealing anything incriminating he took pen in hand and wrote and wrote about all his artistic passions, beginning, "Here it is—this is my life! I am an artist! A man of the theater!"

An “absorbing” account of the CIA’s 1953 coup in Iran—essential reading for anyone concerned about Iran’s role in the world today (Harper’s Magazine). In August 1953, the Central Intelligence Agency orchestrated the swift overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader and installed Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in his place. When the 1979 Iranian Revolution deposed the shah and replaced his puppet government with a radical Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the shift reverberated throughout the Middle East and the world, casting a long, dark shadow over United States-Iran relations that extends to the present day. In this authoritative new history of the coup and its aftermath, noted Iran scholar Ervand Abrahamian uncovers little-known documents that challenge conventional interpretations and sheds new light on how the American role in the coup influenced diplomatic relations between the two countries, past and present. Drawing from the hitherto closed archives of British Petroleum, the Foreign Office, and the US State Department, as well as from Iranian memoirs and published interviews, Abrahamian’s riveting account of this key historical event will change America’s understanding of a crucial turning point in modern United States-Iranian relations. A Choice Outstanding Academic Title “Not only is this book important because of its presentation of history. It is also important because it might be predicting the future.” —Counterpunch “Subtle, lucid, and well-proportioned.” —The Spectator “A valuable corrective to previous work and an important contribution to Iranian history.” —American Historical Review