In a brave, disturbing book, Azizi exposes the nature of the Iranian regime and applauds the courage of its opponents.
According to this passionate book, Iranians want a liberated life in a free country.
Azizi, the author of The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US, and Iran’s Global Ambitions, is a writer and historian based in New York City who specializes in Middle East issues. He shows how in Iran, even the most basic rights are either nonexistent or severely curtailed, with women and ethnic minorities facing the most severe oppression. The author tracks through the history of the country since 1979, when the aging cleric Ayatollah Khomeini led a revolution to install a hard-line Islamic regime. His shadow still looms large over Iranian politics, in everything from the requirement that all women wear hajib to the militant gangs who roam the streets looking for transgressors. Azizi ably describes the tenures of subsequent leaders who have promised reforms, only to crack down when pressed; the current Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, is perhaps the most ruthless and manipulative of all. With the media effectively under government control, it is difficult for any organized opposition to form. Nevertheless, protests and demonstrations occur regularly, and the regime responds with murderous force and arbitrary detention. Azizi chronicles his interviews with many of Iran’s dissidents and believes that pressure is building for real change. His optimism, however, might be misplaced. The government, while plagued by corruption and incompetence, still has considerable support, and it holds all the guns. Still, the author lays out the situation in a cleareyed manner, and readers will leave with a deeper understanding of Iran’s historical and current circumstances. “No matter what comes after Khamenei,” he writes, “Iran’s formidable mass movements will continue to fight for Women, Life, Freedom: the fullest democracy and social, economic, environmental and gender justice.”
In a brave, disturbing book, Azizi exposes the nature of the Iranian regime and applauds the courage of its opponents.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780861547111
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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