Michael Axworthy is Former Head of the Iran Section of the British Foreign Office from 1998-2000. He is currently Senior Lecturer and Director of the Centre for Persian and Iranian Studies at the University of Exeter, and the author of Empire of the Mind: A History of Iran.

"This is one of the few must-read books of this year...[E]xcellent and insightful from beginning to end."--Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution

"If you were to read only one book on present-day Iran you could not do better than this. Michael Axworthy, a Foreign-Office-expert-turned- academic, has drawn on his own experience as well as archival research to produce a highly readable narrative of the Islamic Republic."--Ervand Abrahamian, Times Higher Education

"Balancing scholarly precision with narrative flair, Mr. Axworthy depicts an Islamic movement that exploited and distorted traditional Shia beliefs in order to seize and hold on to power...scholarly rigor and first-class analysis."--The Economist

"Meticulously fair and scholarly...[A] very fine work that deserves to be read by anyone interested in the Middle East. Iran is inevitably still central to events in the region and beyond, not just through the potential for war over its nuclear program, nor even because of its continued support for the Assad regime in Syria, but because it is, as Axworthy says, less a country than a continent, more a civilization than a nation."--James Buchan, The Guardian

"Because of [the Iranian] election, Revolutionary Iran, which takes the reader up to the end of 2012, is particularly well-timed. It will be invaluable for those hoping to make sense of the coverage. With it, Axworthy has confirmed his position as one of the most lucid and humane western interpreters of Iran writing at the moment."--The New Statesman

"This book puts much-needed flesh on the simplistic caricature of Iran."--The Times (UK)

"The Shah's imperial folly and overthrow are described grippingly."--The Daily Telegraph

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Pub date: 2016-04-01

Length: 544 pages