Books
Thirty Portraits volume 2
"As the title suggests, 30 Portraits is a collection of my experiences and memories with thirty of my friends, acquaintances, and colleagues. I made the selection of these individuals not only based on the roles they have played in my life, but their invaluable part in the developments of the past half century." The second volume of Thirty Portraits includes Dr. Milani's reflections on Farzaneh Milani, Shahrnush Parsipur, Simin Behbahani, Qodsi Khanum, Bita Daryabari, Parviz Shokat, Hussein Montazeri, Mohammad Reza Shajarian, Bahram Beyzaie, and Fakhr al-Din Shadman among others.
Shadman’s Diaries: The Odyssey of a Young Cleric, 1926-1928
This is the first of a projected six-volume collection, beginning in 1926 with Shadman’s days as a cleric and ending in 1966 shortly before his death. In between is a rich tapestry of accounts of daily events, reflections, observations, accounts of dreams, cultural and political history, anecdotes, and telling details about the country’s changing history of manners, all from the astute perspective of Shadman. The diaries bring to light not only a detailed account of why the early generation of intellectuals advocating modernity joined the Pahlavi project and how almost all of them were sidelined, but also how Shadman used his diaries for literary experimentation and private self expression.
An Encounter with Dylan Thomas
Abadan, 1951. Iran and Britain are bracing for battle over the continued British monopoly of Iran’s oil. Twenty-nine-year-old Ebrahim Golestan, who was to become a towering figure in Iranian cinema and literature, encounters Dylan Thomas, the famous Welsh poet. More for his celebrity than an intimate knowledge of the subject, Thomas had been sent to Iran by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company to write a script for a propaganda film about the company’s supposedly salutary role in the country. But for a few hours, Golestan and Thomas pause amidst the escalating standoff between their two countries and speak candidly about poetry, history, philosophy, and the perils of translation.
Thirty Portraits
"As the title suggests, 30 Portraits is a collection of my experiences and memories with thirty of my friends, acquaintances, and colleagues. I made the selection of these individuals not only based on the roles they have played in my life, but their invaluable part in the developments of the past half century. They say every person is an embodiment of memories. The catalyst for historical events has on one hand been a result of political and economic structures and the will of leaders, and on the other hand, the consequence of active resistance or silent complacency of people. 30 Portraits are my account of thirty of such people."
A Scholar For Our Times
Shahrokh Meskoob was an Iranian writer and intellectual, who was born in Babol, on the Caspian coast, in 1924 and died in Paris in 2005. Imprisoned in the mid-1950s for leftist activities, he was forced to leave the country following the Islamic Revolution of 1979, after publishing two critical articles in the Ayandegan newspaper in Tehran. This book celebrates Meskoob’s life and work in eight essays by prominent Iranian scholars and in a selection of facsimiles of his papers, now archived at Stanford University.
Saadi and Humanism
With Maryam Mirzadeh. Tehran: Zemestan, 2020. In Persian.
A Window Into Modern Iran
The inner workings of Iranian politics, as experienced by two key figures at their center, are revealed through the meticulously preserved documents and photographs in the Ardeshir Zahedi Papers at the Hoover Institution Library and Archives. These materials are essential for understanding modern Iranian history and its global context. These archives were preserved over the course of two illustrious careers: those of Ardeshir Zahedi, Iran's ambassador to the United States and United Kingdom, and minister of foreign affairs; and his father, Fazlollah Zahedi, military general and prime minister of Iran after the 1953 overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh.
Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran
Despite the relative calm apparent in Iran today, there is unmistakable evidence of political, social, and cultural ferment stirring beneath the surface. The authors of Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran—a group of scholars, activists, and artists—explore that unrest and its challenge to the legitimacy and stability of the present authoritarian regime. Ranging from political theory to music, from human rights law to social media, their contributions reveal the tenacious and continually evolving forces that are at work resisting the status quo.
Negahi Be Shah
Though his monarchy was toppled in 1979 and he died in 1980, Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlevi, the last Shah of Iran, remains relevant today. He was a social reformer, a romantic egomaniac, and a deeply conflicted man and leader. Here, internationally respected author Abbas Milani gives us the definitive biography, more than ten years in the making, of the monarch who shaped Iran's modern age and with it the contemporary politics of the Middle East.
The Shah
Though his monarchy was toppled in 1979 and he died in 1980, Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlevi, the last Shah of Iran, remains relevant today. He was a social reformer, a romantic egomaniac, and a deeply conflicted man and leader. Here, internationally respected author Abbas Milani gives us the definitive biography, more than ten years in the making, of the monarch who shaped Iran's modern age and with it the contemporary politics of the Middle East.
The Myth of the Great Satan
This critical review of the history of America's relations with Iran shows how little of the two countries' long and complicated relationship is reflected in the foundational axioms of the "Great Satan" myth. The author explains why meaningful and equitable relations can begin only after the two nations have arrived at a common, critical, and accurate reading of the past.
Eminent Persians
As the 25th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution approached, Abbas Milani realized that very little, if any, attention had been given to the entire prerevolutionary generation. Political upheavals and a tradition of neglecting the history of past regimes have resulted in a cultural memory loss, erasing the contributions of a generation of individuals. Eminent Persians seeks to rectify that loss. Milani’s groundbreaking portrait of modern Iran reveals the country’s rich history through the lives of the men and women who forged it.
King of Shadows: Essays on Iran’s Encounter with Modernity
Los Angeles, CA: Ketab Corp, 2005.
Lost Wisdom: Rethinking Persian Modernity
In the essays collected here, Abbas Milani uses an impressive array of cross-disciplinary Western and Iranian theories and texts to investigate the crucial question of modernity in Iran today. He offers a wealth of new insights into the thousand-year-old conflict in Iran between the search for modernity and the forces of religious obscurantism. The essays trace the roots of Shiite Islamic fundamentalism and offer illuminating accounts of the work of Iranian intellectuals—both men and women—and their artistic movements as they struggle to find a new path toward a genuine modernity in Iran that is congruent with Iran’s rich cultural heritage.
The Persian Sphinx: Amir Abbas Hoveyda and the Riddle of the Iranian Revolution
Amir Abbas Hoveyda was a central figure in the historic struggle between modernity and tradition in Iran — a struggle pitting Western cosmopolitanism against Persian isolationism, secularism against religious fundamentalism, and ultimately civil society and democracy against authoritarianism. Hoveyda embodied the aspirations, the accomplishments and also the failures of a whole generation of Iranian technocrats — mostly Western-trained — who sought to free Iran from the travails of poverty and repression and guide it into the modern age. Hoveyda would be both a leader and a victim of that effort.
Tales of Two Cities: A Persian Memoir
Tales of Two Cities: A Persian Memoir is an engrossing, cross-cultural memoir of revolution and exile. It is the story of a fifteen year-old Persian boy sent for his eduction from an old-world, pre-oil boom Tehran, to the new-world, avant-garde San Francisco of the 1960s. Abbas Milani richly chronicles his education, politicization, return to Iran, disillusionment and eventual exile. Interwoven with the brisk narrative is a loving account of the traditional Iran of the author’s childhood; a searing memoir of a lost generation of Iranians torn apart by revolution and exile, a graphic portrait of the author’s time in the shah’s jail and of his cellmates, the mullahs who would soon emerge as the new leaders of the Islamic Republic.