Customer Reviews

Iran (Opposing Viewpoints)

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The whole Opposing Viewpoint idea is wonderful, giving multiple perspectives to complex issues and providing an excellent tool for educators, debaters, and critical thinkers. This book on Iran is up to the usual high standards of the Opposing Viewpoints series, recently tying for first place for the Middle East Outreach Council's 2007 award for best reference book for young people. "Iran: Opposing Viewpoints" does a good job in tackling many major contemporary issues related to Iran, especially issues related to U.S. foreign policy. Of course, the nature of the book is that some articles are better written than others. However, the book's strength is its organizational structure. A wide variety of issues are discussed, and the articles are paired with another opposite view of the same issue. Each article is preceded by a brief description of the main points of the article and the author's credentials since that information helps the reader evaluate the article's perspective. The questions for thought also provide advance organizers. To keep the book from being a jumble of separate opinions, there is a solid structural framework. The questions for further discussion at the end of the book are excellent as are such features as the list of organizations to contact and the bibliography (though sometimes one might question why those particular organizations and books were selected and not others). The index at the very end is also useful to help students locate particular people or events quickly. All in all, this book is a very useful reference tool, well organized and well planned.