Iran Memoir

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.

“His vision made giants out of men and organizations.” A pioneer, an adventurer, a great industrialist and a caring, courageous human being…the story of J.R.D. Tata is fascinating. His biography is the tale of determination, integrity and prodigious intelligence.

In 2009, Samieh Hezari made a terrible mistake. She flew from her adopted home of Ireland to her birthplace in Iran so her 14-month-old daughter, Rojha, could be introduced to the child's father. When the violent and unstable father refused to allow his daughter to leave and demanded that Samieh renew their relationship, a two-week holiday became a desperate five-year battle to get her daughter out of Iran. If Samieh could not do so before Rojha turned seven, the father could take sole custody - forever.

Until his assassination by US drone strike in January 2020, commander Qassem Soleimani was one of the most powerful men in Iran and the military spearhead for Iranian foreign policy, enacting the wishes of the country's Supreme Leader in the region. A widely popular but also feared maverick operator, he helped to establish the Islamic Republic as a major force in the Middle East, with interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. This was a long way from where he began as a youth, living on the margins in a country ruled by a monarch supported by the United States.

It all started with a single photo, a bold statement on Masih's Facebook page: a woman standing proudly, her face bare, her beautiful, curly hair blowing in the wind. Her crime: simply removing her veil, or hijab, which is compulsory for women in Iran. This is the photo that sparked a social-media liberation movement, 'My Stealthy Freedom'. Across Iran, women started posting pictures of their uncovered hair on Masih's page in open defiance of the strict religious beliefs of their country (and often their families) while sharing their personal stories about this powerful mode of expression.

When he was assassinated in 1896, Nasir al-Din Shah had sat on the Peacock throne for nearly half a century. A colorful, complex figure, he is frequently portrayed as indolent and self-indulgent. Yet he was in many ways an effective ruler who displayed exceptional resilience in the face of dilemmas and vulnerabilities shared by most monarchs of the Islamic world in the 19th century. In this book-the first in English about Nasir al-Din Shah, Abbas Amanat gives us both a biography of the man and an analysis of the institution of monarchy in modern Iran.

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.

On the streets of every city a true life battle between revenge and justice is fought. Marginalized communities caught in the crossfire of violence, poverty, drugs, and abuse, seem to spiral. To those on the outside, it is too easily brushed off and judged as just the way things are. To those on the inside, what happens stems from a fight for survival, a longing for family stability, and is a reflection of all they’ve ever known. Author Iran Nazario has lived this. Beaten and abused as a child, witnessing and experiencing things no child should, he was forced to grow up too fast.

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.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, Americans were left wondering how such a long-term, globally coordinated plot could have escaped detection by the CIA and taken the nation by surprise. Robert Baer was not surprised. A retired veteran of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, Baer saw firsthand how an increasingly bureaucratic CIA lost its way in the post-Cold War world and refused to adequately acknowledge and neutralize the growing threat of Islamic fundamentalist terror in the Middle East.

As a 23-year veteran of the United States Navy SEAL Teams, Ryan Zinke received two Bronze Stars for battle valor and eventually rose to command the elite members of SEAL Team Six. During his career Zinke trained and commanded many of the men who would one day run the covert operations to hunt down Osama bin Laden and save Captain Phillips ( Maersk Alabama). He also served as mentor to now famous SEALs Marcus Luttrell ( Lone Survivor) and Chris Kyle ( American Sniper).

Faleeha Hassan became intimately acquainted with loss and fear while growing up in Najaf, Iraq. Now, in a deeply personal account of her life, she remembers those she has loved and lost.

Raw, Unvarnished, provocative, and poetically written, "The Last Living Slut: Born in Iran, Bred Backstage" is the memoir of Roxana Shirazi, who was raised during Iran's revolution within a politically active family and sent to England by her family aged ten during the Iran/Iraq war, and led far astray by the sound - and the sex appeal - of rock and roll.

The dramatic memoir of the journalist who was held hostage in a high-security prison in Tehran for 18 months and whose release - which almost didn’t happen - became a part of the Iran nuclear deal.

Forced to become a normal citizen, the exiled son of the late Shah of Iran attempts to provide understanding and direction for his country and its people.

Nikki Haley is widely admired for her forthright manner (“with all due respect, I don’t get confused”), her sensitive approach to tragic events, and her confident representation of America’s interests as our ambassador to the United Nations during times of crisis and consequence. In this book, Haley offers a firsthand perspective on major national and international matters as well as a behind-the-scenes account of her tenure in the Trump administration.

The life of Taj al-Saltaneh, daughter of the ruler of Iran, Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, epitomized the predicaments of her changing era. Overcoming her limited education within the harem walls, Taj chronicled a 30-year span in the life of a generation that witnessed a shift from traditional order to revolutionary flux.

Kateryna ha 28 anni, ha fatto la modella, ha amici sparsi per l'Europa e all'inizio del 2022 spera che in Ucraina scoppi la guerra: «Non sono così vile da augurarmi di vivere sotto il ricatto di Vladimir Putin per anni, contando sul fatto che il compito di affrontarlo spetti poi a un'altra generazione invece che alla mia». Oggi Kateryna è un soldato. Assim ha 23 anni, studia Ingegneria aerospaziale all'università di Teheran e dal giorno in cui Mahsa Amini è morta, il 16 settembre 2022, con il suo gruppo ha cominciato a scrivere il nome di Mahsa nei bagni delle università e nei vagoni dei treni.

Growing up in Tehran in the 1960s, Terence Ward and his brothers were watched over by Hassan, the family’s cook, housekeeper, and cultural guide. After an absence of 30 years and much turmoil in Iran, Ward embarks on a quixotic pilgrimage with his family in search of their lost friend. However, as they set out on this improbable quest with no address or phone number, their only hope lies in their mother’s small black and white photograph taken decades before.

A journalist returns to her family home in Iran, witnessing enormous political, social, and personal change.