King of Kings: The Iranian revolution, a story of hubris, delusion, and catastrophic miscalculation by Scott Anderson
Started: September 5, 2025
Completed: November 29, 2025
Recommendation: Mild Recommendation
Medium: Audio
Recommended By: Nobody
Review:
There was a lot to learn in this book. It was clearly well researched and worked well as a narrative moving back and forth between time periods as needed and managing to maintain a fairly coherent narrative. Long as it was, it could easily have been much longer as a vast amount of information was covered trivially in the epilogue. As an American, there was simply so much here that I did not know. As a highschooler, I did know some of those who escaped Iran with the Shah, but only in the most trivial way as the people I knew did not speak English well (not a slam, to be expected). I don't know the details, really, but it seemed like the Catholic school in which I was enrolled harbored these kids while their families tried to figure out what to do.
I am much more sympathetic, oddly, to the revolution in Iran after reading this book (which offers little sympathy). There is no doubt that the people of Iran felt that they were under constant surveillance and that the Shah was robbing the country. At this point, it seems clear that they are under more threat from the current government, but there is no way to know how things are going to go. There is also little doubt that the standard of living has declined, but at least the leaders are not living literally as kings. Please note, I do not sympathize with the demonizing of America that was central to the acceptance of the government, though there is no doubt that the USA's foreign policy has caused most reasonable people to dislike the United States since the end of the Cold War (and likely before).
