Customer Reviews

Tales of Two Cities: A Persian Memoir

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I have had the pleasure and the enlightening experience of traveling with Abbas Milani on a Stanford University travel/study tour to Morocco. His lectures on Islam were concise and highly informative. Back home, I purchased his memoir about life in Iran and Berkeley, California. It's short, sweet and paints a vivid picture of growing up in a rapidly-changing Tehran during the later years of the Shah and the early years of the revolution. In Tehran Dr. Milani spent a year in prison for his pro-democratic views, and in Berkeley he was a student activist. His reflections on these experiences make for great reading. If you enjoy this book, please check out his many other writings in magazines and newspapers, which are equally insightful and easily accessible on the Internet, as well as his soon-to-be-published book about the reign of Shah of Iran.

Much of what I wanted to say was already told on all above reviews. I would like to add that this is the book that I actually finished reading, as I had tried so many others on the subject of "new Iran" and was hard to connect with. This is a memoir that is hard not to like it and after reading few pages I was already living on the days and years that the author was painting.
Thanks professor Milani for such an excellent recount of Irans turmoils on 70-90's.