Iran and Revolution: A Modern History of Iran

Iranian-British historian and academic Homa Katouzian presents a comprehensive study of Iran's modern history from the 1940s to the present, focusing on the political and social conditions that led to the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and its consequences.The book does not treat the Iranian Revolution as a sudden event or simply a victory for a religious movement, but rather attempts to explain it as the result of long historical accumulations of conflict between the state and society. The author presents the major transformations that Iran went through, starting with the fall of Reza Shah, the nationalization of oil, and the coup against the government of Muhammad Mossadeq in 1953, up to the rule of Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi and his fall, then the establishment of the Islamic Republic.The book focuses on a central idea in Katouzian’s work known as “short-term society,” a theory that explains the nature of the tense relationship between power and society in Iran, and how the fragility of institutions and the recurrence of political interruptions have led to the reproduction of crises and revolutions throughout modern Iranian history.