Iran Memoir

Torn between his love of Iran - the land where his family’s roots have existed for over 2,500 years - and his desire for religious and political freedom, Isaac Yomtovian takes readers on a journey through his childhood in Tehran to his eventual immigration to America. Isaac weaves his recollections with deep insights into Iranian culture and history, the current Islamic regime, and United States-Iranian relations. My Iran intimately depicts a society that is both friendly and intolerant, modern and religious, and theocratic and rooted in democracy.

Jacqueline Saper, named after Jacqueline Kennedy, was born in Tehran to Iranian and British parents. At 18 she witnessed the civil unrest of the 1979 Iranian revolution and continued to live in the Islamic Republic during its most volatile times, including the Iran-Iraq War. In a deeply intimate and personal story, Saper recounts her privileged childhood in prerevolutionary Iran and how she gradually became aware of the paradoxes in her life and community - primarily the disparate religions and cultures. 

In 1979, Neda Toloui-Semnani’s parents left the United States for Iran to join the revolution. But the promise of those early heady days in Tehran was warped by the rise of the Islamic Republic. With the new regime came international isolation, cultural devastation, and profound personal loss for Neda. Her father was arrested and her mother was forced to make a desperate escape, pregnant and with Neda in tow.

How do you cheer up a woman who has spent hours cleaning prison toilets with a broken mop? The secret is in a tres leches cake. In Iran’s prisons, women endure horrors: they are beaten, interrogated, and humiliated in a thousand ways. Even a whisper to a fellow inmate can be punished. Yet—in spite of anything and everything—they resist: they bake. They console each other, cry together, dance together. The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club is a call to stand up for women, life, and freedom by a woman still fighting for a free Iran.

A true story as exhilarating as a great spy thriller, as turbulent as today's headlines from the Middle East, A Time to Betray reveals what no other previous CIA operative's memoir possibly could: the inner workings of the notorious Revolutionary Guards of Iran, as witnessed by an Iranian man inside their ranks who spied for the American government.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the former national security advisor and secretary of state comes a “sharp and penetrating . . . reminder that foreign-policy choices facing the United States are complex and difficult, with no easy solutions” (The Washington Post). A native of...

The definitive history of Iran, from the ancient Persian empires to today. “Michael Axworthy’s deft untangling of the country’s history, from the advent of Zoroastrianism to the 1979 revolution, is a stunning achievement.” -Guardian Iran is a land of contradictions. It is an Islamic...

"Reporter is just wonderful. Truly a great life, and what shines out of the book, amid the low cunning and tireless legwork, is Hersh's warmth and humanity. This book is essential reading for every journalist and aspiring journalist the world over." —John le Carré From the Pulitzer...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2023 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, NPR, TIME MAGAZINE & MORE “Masterful . . . A book of inner journeys told through extraordinary exteriors . . . One of his very best.” —Washington Post “Dazzling.” —Time Magazine, Best Books of...

This revealing memoir from a 34-year veteran of the CIA who worked as a case officer and recruiter of foreign agents before and after 9/11 provides an invaluable perspective on the state of modern spy craft, how the CIA has developed, and how it must continue to evolve. If you've ever wondered...

A courageous memoir from a prize-winning poet and prisoner of conscience in Iran 'Against the scale of Iran's past, her testimony reinforces the power of individual conscience and endurance as the only way forward.' —Financial Times In March 2008, the Intelligence Bureau of Mashhad summoned...

This is a powerful memoir of a young girl, growing up in the tumultuous revolutionary Iran in the mid 80’s, which sadly, once again we are witnessing these days the horrendous arrest and executions of many young men and women in Iran. The author chronicles her early childhood with her Bibi (grandmother) as well as her imprisonment at the age of eighteen on trumped-up political charges. During her brutal incarceration in the women’s cell block of the Shiraz Adelabad Prison in the southern Iran, she was tortured and made to live in harsh over-crowded conditions among many other young ...

As a student of Woodrow Wilson at Princeton, Howard Baskerville was aflame not only with the gospel of Jesus, but with the Wilsonian gospel that constitutional democracy is the birthright of all nations. Rather than become a small-town minister like his father in South Dakota, he volunteered for missionary service in Persia. Tabriz in 1907 was a hotbed of democratic revolution. Brilliant young firebrands were among Baskerville’s students at the Presbyterian school—and became his devoted friends. He lectured on freedom; they dedicated their lives to it.

The “astonishing and deeply poignant” (The Washington Post) memoir of one man’s search for a beloved family friend explores the depth of Iranian culture and the sweep of its history, and transcends today’s news headlines to remind us of the humanity that connects us all. Growing up in...

This program is read by the author. A revealing, dramatic, deeply personal audiobook about the most significant events of our time, by the former United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Nikki Haley is widely admired for her forthright manner (“With all due respect, I don’t get...

A Persian Iran Through the Lens of an American Husband and Father What happens when the world fractures between two countries — and your family stands on both sides of the rupture? When explosions echo in Tehran and you are standing under a peaceful sky in North Carolina, distance is no longer abstract. It is physical. It is political. It is personal. In A Persian Iran, Dr. Eric Infanti offers a powerful braided memoir that moves between intimate family life and the long arc of Persian civilization. Through the eyes of an American husband and father, this book explores what it means to ...

On the way home, I turned onto a street demonstration where people were yelling and burning tires. I told my son it was a street repair crew, but I don’t think he believed me. With the windows down we were suffocating on the rubber smoke. Even with the windows up, John and I were coughing and gagging from the smell of burning rubber. I was afraid to open the windows again because the demonstrators had surrounded the car and were pounding on the hood, the sides, and trunk.

This history of modern Iran is not a survey in the conventional sense but an ambitious exploration of the story of a nation. It offers a revealing look at how events, people, and institutions are shaped by currents that sometimes reach back hundreds of years. The book covers the complex history of the diverse societies and economies of Iran against the background of dynastic changes, revolutions, civil wars, foreign occupation, and the rise of the Islamic Republic.

Es ist die Geschichte einer furchtlosen Frau und ihres unermüdlichen Einsatzes für politischen Wandel, Gleichberechtigung, Frauenrechte und die Rechte eines ganzen Volkes. Narges Mohammadi blickt zurück auf ihren außergewöhnlichen Lebensweg – als unerschrockene Aktivistin, die trotz Gefängnisses, Repressionen und Folter nicht schweigt.

In Captive in Iran, Maryam and Marziyeh recount their 259 days in Evin. It’s an amazing story of unyielding faith - when denying God would have meant freedom. Of incredible support from strangers around the world who fought for the women’s release. And of bringing God’s light into one of the world’s darkest places - giving hope to those who had lost everything, and showing love to those in despair.