Patrick Clawson, director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and coauthor of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos, gives an overview of the best and worst books on Iran in the Middle East Quarterly.
His reviews are both insightful and fun, especially if you enjoy seeing some highly-regarded experts skewered.
Here's an example of one of his keen insights and something everyone should appreciate about the state of scholarship inside Iran:
Although many Arab societies take the attitude that information is power and information shared is power lost, Iranian researchers collect and publish detailed statistics on delicate political issues. Similarly, whereas many Arab governments disregard scholarly examination of their own country, at least until the rise of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Islamic Republic's institutions sponsored studies on controversial historical and social issues.... To be sure, there are limits Iranian scholars cross only at their peril—criticism of the Islamic Republic's theological underpinnings, for example—but Iranians' positive attitudes toward scholarship cannot be understated.
And here is another of his insights, this one something you should know about the state of press freedom in Iran:
In a striking paradox, though, for a country so open to scholarship, the Iranian regime tightly controls mass media in order to monopolize interpretation of current political issues. That control extends not only to Iran's mass media but also to the access given to Western reporters. Those who speak out of turn to Western journalists are punished. The rule seems to be: Information and analysis is fine so long as no one notices them—that is, so long as they remain confined to the obscure scholarly and intellectual circles—but anything destined for the masses, Western as well as Iranian, must be carefully crafted.
What this adds up to, suggests Clawson, is that "a good rule of thumb for learning about Iran [would be] to read the obscure scholarly books and ignore anything that sells well."
Also to be avoided, says Clawson, are most books written by academics at prestigious Western universities.
Here are the books that Clawson suggests you don't need to bother reading:
Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty by Ali Gheissari (at Brown University) and Vali Nasr (at the Naval Postgraduate School and the Council on Foreign Relations) - a "rehash" says Clawson, "[of] stories told elsewhere with as much insight."
Ali Ansari's (St. Andrews University)
Confronting Iran: The Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Next Great Conflict in the Middle East is plagued by what Clawson describes as an unwillingness to confront "the ideological hostility of Iranian power-holders, who have little use for Western-oriented intellectuals like Ansari and his friends," according to Clawson.
Also not worth the effort, suggests Clawson, is Nikki Keddie's
Modern Iran. Though he acknowledges that this is "perhaps the most influential book, at least among the university student population" and that Keddie, a UCLA historian emeritus, has knowledge that runs deep, so too do her liberal politics, says Clawson, and they, he suggests, undermine her scholarship.
Worst among recent books by Western-based academics in Clawson's view, is Brown University's William Beeman's
The "Great Satan" vs. the "Mad Mullahs": How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other. For starters, Clawson writes:
It is disappointing to find a full professor at an Ivy League school writing a book that claims to examine how Iran views the United States while the author cites only four articles or books in the Persian language....The failure to cite primary sources is more troubling given Beeman's intemperate language, more appropriate for talk radio than scholarship.
This is unfortunate, says Clawson, because:
As a linguistic anthropologist, [Beeman] would be well placed to analyze Iranian rhetoric and to elaborate upon the cultural context for themes used in speeches, textbooks, and television images. Instead, he ignores what Iranians themselves are saying, writing, and filming, preferring instead to cite what Westerners writing in English say about Iranians. That is typical of the critics of U.S. policy towards Iran: they themselves make little effort to read or listen to the extensive material available from Iran, and then they project onto the U.S. government their own ignorance of what the Iranian regime projects.
There are exceptions to his rule of thumb. Most notably, says Clawson, is Harvard's Charles Kurzman's
The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran. He describes Kurzman's book as the "definitive account of the Islamic Revolution" and says "no serious historian can write about these events without consulting it."
Clawson also likes Ray Takeyh's
Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic. Takeyh, who used to work for Clawson, is described as "an excellent writer" and his book, writes Clawson, "[is] a pleasure to read." He does criticize him, however for "[slipping at times] into simple assertions of the usual liberal shibboleths, for instance, blaming the hard-liners' success on U.S. hostility."
Also a "must-read" according to Clawson is Massoume Price's
Iran's Diverse Peoples: A Reference Sourcebook. This London-trained anthropologist, says Clawson, "shows that Iran very much remains a Persian empire: a country in which Persians dominate a mosaic of ethnic and religious groups." She gets criticized for "[skipping] too quickly over Islam's slow permeation of Iran."
Dartmouth professor Gene Garthwaite's
The Persians is also well-worth reading, according to Clawson, who describes it as "that rarity: a readable, historical introduction rooted deeply in the scholarly literature. "
As far as Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi's
Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope, is concerned, Clawson says the book only goes to show how strangely resistent Ebadi is to the lessons of her experience. In Clawson's words, "she remains committed to the revolution that has enslaved her."
If you want to insight into the lives of ordinary Iranians, Clawson suggests going to the blogosphere. But since this isn't so easy for non-Farsi-speakers, here are two books that can help you bridge the gap:
We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs by Nasrin Alavi.
The Soul of Iran: A Nation's Journey to Freedom by Afshin Molavi.
Do read Clawson's whole review as I haven't done him justice.
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