Read The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran by Andrew Scott Cooper Online

officials, this thorough work is immensely detailed yet readable and continuously engaging.” Publishers Weekly "Cooper delves intimately into the life of the leader who believed firmly in the separation of church and state and who seemed stern and humorless to the public yet was a devoted father of five children and had no patience for the imams dragging their feet on reformsA thorough new appraisal of an enigmatic ruler who died believing his people still loved him." Kirkus (starred review) “Cooper provides an expert and more nuanced view of the Shah, his regime, and its collapse….This is a fine revisionist study of major world events that continue to influence the fate of the Middle East.” Booklist“Here is all the power and glamourbut also the dark side and ultimately the tragedyof the last Shah of Iran. “Riveting Based on various doc

He is a regular commentator on US-Iran relations and the oil markets, and his research has appeared in many news outlets including The New York Times and The Guardian. . He holds a PhD in the history of US-Iran relations and lives in New York City. Andrew Scott Cooper is the author of The Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle E

"Iran's revolution as it happened,not as the NY Times reported it ." according to Jim Rossi. I could not put this down .I was struck at how similar The Iranian Revolution and The Russian Revolution were. Both were a popular uprising,highjacked by fanatics that then proceeded to kill more "enemies" than the regime they overthrew and both turned on themselves .There is only a slight mention of the role the US press had in demonizing the Shah,and the usual State Department progressives . Carter 's role is left out . How history would have been changed if the Shah listened to his military , resigned and put his son on the throne.Reading how the Islamists were goading the troops to fire on crowds to cr. "Best anecdote: Saddam Hussein seeking the Shah's acquiescence to" according to karen house. Very informative and readable account if the Shah's undoing by his arrogance, his family's corruption, his inept and self-centered appointees who served themselves not Iran (or the Shah) and the well orchestrated campaign of his religious adversaries led by Khomeini. Best anecdote: Saddam Hussein seeking the Shah's acquiescence to haveKhomeini murdered while still in exile in Iraq and the Shah's demurring. The first 200 pages of history are less engaging if you know something of Iran but the succeeding pages provide a gripping blow by blow if the slow, then accelerating, inevitable demise of the shah's reg. A timely history of how Iran exchanged its Shah for rule by the ayatollahs. A new look at the last years of the reign of the last Shah of Iran based on meticulous research and interviews with many of those who were witnesses to his last year's on the Peacock Throne. The revolution which ended his reign and brought Ayotollah Khomeni to power are described with a fresh eye. The author fills in many of the gaps in our knowledge of Khomeini's background and describes in detail how the revolutionaries gained power. It's refreshing to read this history by a thoughtful researcher at a time when what happens today in Iran matters to the whole Middle East.

An immersive, gripping account of the rise and fall of Iran's glamorous Pahlavi dynasty, written with the cooperation of the late Shah's widow, Empress Farah, Iranian revolutionaries and US officials from the Carter administrationIn this remarkably human portrait of one of the twentieth century's most complicated personalities, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Andrew Scott Cooper traces the Shah's life from childhood through his ascension to the throne in 1941. Intimate and sweeping at once, The Fall of Heaven recreates in stunning detail the dramatic and final days of one of the world's most legendary ruling families, the unseating of which helped set the stage for the current state of the Middle East.. He draws the turbulence of the post-war era during which the Shah survived assassination attempts and coup plots to build a modern, pro-Western state and launch Iran onto the world stage as one of the world's top five powers. Cooper's investigative account ultimately delivers the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty through the eyes of those who were there: leading Iranian revolutionaries; President Jimmy Carter and White House officials; US Ambassador William Sullivan and his staff in the American embassy in Teh