Reddit reviews Blood and Oil: Inside the Shah's Iran (Modern Library Paperbacks)

http://www.amazon.com/History-Greenwood-Histories-Modern-Nations/dp/0313307318/ref=cm_lmf_img_9/181-0760775-7673100

http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Oil-Inside-Library-Paperbacks/dp/0375753087/ref=cm_lmf_tit_12/181-0760775-7673100

http://www.amazon.com/Sowing-Wind-Seeds-Conflict-Middle/dp/0393058492

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rise-Fall-Shah-Autocracy-Religious/dp/0691140405/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288638090&sr=1-2

Possibly not worth buying, library maybe?

http://www.amazon.com/Great-War-Civilisation-Conquest-Middle/dp/1400041511

The books already mentioned are good.

If you want to read from the brutal honest perspective of someone in the inner circle of the Shah, explaining all the blunders, mistakes and foolish things that brought the country so much pain and took the old regime down, take a look at Blood and Oil by Manucher Farmanfarmaian. It is a

http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Oil-Inside-Library-Paperbacks/dp/0375753087

> Prince Manucher Farmanfarmaian was born in 1917 as a Prince of Persia's reigning Qajar Dynasty. He was raised in a world of Oriental luxury in his father's harem. After obtaining a "proper" education in England, he returned to his homeland, which had changed forever. The Qajar Dynasty had been overthrown and replaced by a Military Officer named Reza Pahlavi, a man determined to "modernise" Iran. As the new Pahlavi Dynasty worked to break the power of the Persian Nobility, they would lead to the creation of a nation of hedonistic aristocrats, not only divorced from the common people but increasingly from reality in general. Writing these memoirs with the aid of his daughter Roxanne, Prince Farmanfarmaian delves deep into the splendor of the Pahlavi Dynasty, while at the same time revealing the very blunders which brought them down. From the profiteering of Reza Shah the Great, to the disastrous socialism of Mossadegh, to the havoc that the last Shah's "land reform" wreaked on the economy, the reader will deeply enjoy being swept away into a nation's tortured history. When the Mullahs finally seize controll and the Prince is forced to follow the Shah into exile, the reader will be on the edge of their seat wondering if he will finally escape. Prince Manucher and Princess Roxanne are to be applauded for taking up the challenge of the glory that was the Pahlavis, without at all ignoring their warts and pimples.