A surprisingly honest and candid introduction to modern Iran and Iran-America relations, coming from a Washington insider. My only objection to this was the (in my opinion) excessive stress on trying to look at things from `an Iranian cultural context', which gives it a sort of neo-orientalist feel, when I think most issues can be well understood on fairly universal terms. To his credit the author admits that, and makes it abundantly clear what he eels about the West's role in thwarting democracy in Iran. Obviously, no one book can sum up such a vast topic, but this is a good initial introduction to ancient and modern Iranian history.