<i> The Shah </i> book launch with Dr. Abbas Milani

Tuesday, March 1, 2011
4:30 PM - 6:30 PM
(Pacific)
Language Corner, Building 260 PIGOTT HALL, Room 113
Speaker: 

Dr. Abbas Milani, Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University, co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution, and CDDRL affiliated faculty has just published his latest book, The Shah, released by Palgrave Macmillan this month.

The 496 page memoir details the life and legacy of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, providing an authoritative account of his 37-year rule marked by forced modernization, political consolidation, and personal over-indulgence that drove his country into the throes of Islamic fundamentalism. Milani's biography sheds new light on the mercurial Shah through the examination of recently declassified materials and interviews, which provide intimate details of a monarch and his relationship to the West. To fully grasp Iran's potential for democratic reform today we must first examine its past. The Shah brings us closer to that understanding.

Prior to coming to Stanford, Milani was a professor of history and political science and chair of the department at Notre Dame de Namur University and a research fellow at the Institute of International Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. Milani was an assistant professor in the faculty of law and political science at Tehran University and a member of the board of directors of Tehran University's Center for International Studies from 1979 to 1987. He was a research fellow at the Iranian Center for Social Research from 1977 to 1978 and an assistant professor at the National University of Iran from 1975 to 1977.

Dr. Milani is the author of Eminent Persians: Men and Women Who Made Modern Iran, 1941-1979, (Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY, 2 volumes, November, 2008); King of Shadows: Essays on Iran's Encounter with Modernity, Persian text published in the U.S. (Ketab Corp., Spring 2005); Lost Wisdom: Rethinking Persian Modernity in Iran, (Mage 2004); The Persian Sphinx: Amir Abbas Hoveyda and the Riddle of the Iranian Revolution (Mage, 2000); Modernity and Its Foes in Iran (Gardon Press, 1998); Tales of Two Cities: A Persian Memoir (Mage 1996); On Democracy and Socialism, a collection of articles coauthored with Faramarz Tabrizi (Pars Press, 1987); and Malraux and the Tragic Vision (Agah Press, 1982). Milani has also translated numerous books and articles into Persian and English.

Milani received his BA in political science and economics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1970 and his PhD in political science from the University of Hawaii in 1974.