The Last Great Revolution

The author, a Mideast expert and foreign correspondent, returns to Iran, which she has visited more frequently than has any other American since the fall of the shah. She gives us a portrait of the revolution, a generation after Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile to end 2,500 years of monarchy. She shows us how the Iranian revolution has taken on even greater importance since Khomeini's death, and how it has transformed Iranian society as well as Islam. She describes the revolutions within the revolution that have resulted in a movement as radical in the world of Islam as Luther's Reformation was in the Christian world, empowering women, modernizing social traditions, creating a feisty, independent cinema and arts industry and giving birth to a new generation that is redefining Iran's political agenda. She makes abundantly clear why she believes the Iranian revolution will stand along with the French and the Russian as one of the three innovative revolutions, and the last great revolution of the Modern Era.