Fred Halliday completed his study of 20th-century Iran shortly before the Iranian Revolution of 1979. His work is deeply researched and provocative, offering an outstanding review of the country's uneven capitalist development, state-building, and social structure, as well as its security and military apparatus. It analyzes the protest movements and the country's foreign relations. Even years later, it remains one of the most complex and convincing analyses of this period in Iranian history. Halliday debunks simplistic interpretations of the Pahlavi regime as a modernizing monarchy or a dependent state entity, emphasizing that in order to understand its fragilities, it is necessary to examine the dialectic of dictatorship, development, and the imperial geopolitics of the global Cold War.

This new edition also includes six of Halliday's studies on the Islamic Republic, revealing how his thoughts on Iran and the revolution evolved over time.

Pages: 400, Year of Publication: 0107, Dimensions: 13.5x13.5cm