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The bestselling author of the Emperor, Conqueror and The Wars of the Roses returns to the Ancient World with a gripping adventure based on an epic true story. 'HIS FINEST NOVEL TO DATE . . . THE BATTLE SCENES ARE THRILLING' SUNDAY EXPRESS___________In the Ancient World, one army was feared above all others. 401 BC. The Persian king Artaxerxes rules an empire stretching from the Aegean to northern India. As many as fifty million people are his subjects. His rule is absolute.But the sons of Sparta...

On Wings of Eagles is the thrilling novel based on the incredible real-life rescue of two Americans by a Green Beret colonel and a group of corporate executives from revolutionary Iran, from number one bestseller Ken Follett.A Terrifying PrisonAs Iran descends into revolution, two Americans get caught up in the upheaval. They are captured and held in a heavily guarded fortress. Their situation is desperate, with the US government refusing to get them out. But all hope is not lost . . .A Daring R...

This volume examines the major cultural, religious, political, and urban changes that took place in the Iranian world of Inner and Central Asia in the transition from the pre-Islamic to the Islamic periods. One of the major civilizations of the first millennium was that of the Iranian linguistic and cultural world, which stretched from today's Iraq to what is now the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China. No other region of the world underwent such radical transformation, which fundamentally alter...

This book seeks, for the first time, to examine the demography and the social and economic conditions in the Yerevan Province during the first decade of the twentieth century, before the great changes that occurred during World War I and the seven decades of Soviet rule. Unlike in Tiflis and Baku, the Armenian inhabitants of the Yerevan Province were overwhelmingly peasants. They did not play a major role in the political, intellectual or economic life of the South Caucasus. The aim of the book...

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A hugely ambitious, “delightfully readable, genuinely informative” portrait (The New York Times) of the two-centuries-long entwined histories of Iran and America—two powers who were once allies and now adversaries—by an admired historian and former journalist. In this rich, fascinating history, John Ghazvinian traces the complex story of the relations between these two nations back to the Persian Empire of the eighteenth century—the subject of great a...

Since the Shah went into exile and the Islamic Republic was established in 1979 in the wake of the Iranian Revolution, the very idea of monarchy in Iran has been contentious. Yet, as Persian Kingship and Architecture argues, the institution of kingship has historically played a pivotal role in articulating the abstract notion of 'Iran' since antiquity. These ideas surrounding kingship and nation have, in turn, served as a unifying cultural force despite shifting political and religious allegianc...

Alternative Iran offers a unique contribution to the field of contemporary art, investigating how Iranian artists engage with space and site amid the pressures of the art market and the state's regulatory regimes. Since the 1980s, political, economic, and intellectual forces have driven Iran's creative class toward increasingly original forms of artmaking not meant for official venues. Instead, these art forms appear in private homes with "trusted" audiences, derelict buildings, leftover urban z...

The Saljuq period of the eleventh and twelfth centuries saw the arrival in Iran of Türkmen nomads from Central Asia and the beginning of Turkish rule. Through the example of the city of Isfahan, the book analyses the internal evolution of Iranian society in this period and the interaction of the Iranian elites and Turkish rulers. Drawing on an analysis of a wide range of sources, including poetic and epistolary material, this study fills an historiographical gap and casts new light on the two c...

The four hundred years which followed the explosive spread of Islam in the 7th century brough a unique fusion of cultures to Iran - unique because Iran embraced Islam while maintaining continuity with its own Persian heritage. The result was the great age of Iranian civilization, a broad culture created from the meeting of traditions: art and architecture flourished; Persian poetry flowered, in a language expanded by the rich Arabic vocabulary; great advances were made in science and medicine. R...

When he was assassinated in 1896, Nasir al-Din Shah had occupied the Peacock throne for nearly half a century. A colorful, complex figure, he is frequently portrayed as indolent and indulgent. Yet he was in many ways an effective ruler who displayed remarkable resilience in the face of dilemmas and vulnerabilities shared by most monarchs of the Islamic world in the nineteenth century. The Pivot of the Universe is the first biography of this fascinating monarch. In it Amanat traces Nasir al-Din S...

A detailed study of the Great Mongol Shahnama, considered to be the greatest of all Persian illustrated manuscripts The Great Mongol Shahnama is widely considered to be the definitive version of Firdausi's epic poem, and the greatest of all Persian illustrated manuscripts. The paintings from this manuscript are held in private collections and institutions around the world, and have only been seen together in a single volume once since they were originally dispersed. This monograph reunites the...

A lucid and engaging breakdown of the history, culture, and politics that define today’s Middle East. Untangling the Middle East is a layman’s guide to the history—political, religious, and cultural—that led us to the current challenges plaguing the Middle East. It covers the major interests and actors in the region, and helps to spin a narrative of the evolution of violence and conflict in this age-old hotbed of unrest. There are no easy answers or simple explanations to be found here, only a...

The instant #1 bestseller. “This taut and terrifying book is among the most closely observed accounts of Donald J. Trump’s shambolic tenure in office to date." - Dwight Garner, The New York Times Washington Post national investigative reporter Carol Leonnig and White House bureau chief Philip Rucker, both Pulitzer Prize winners, provide the definitive insider narrative of Donald Trump’s presidency   “I alone can fix it.” So proclaimed Donald J. Trump on July 21, 2016, accepting the Republica...

The Iranian Expanse explores how kings in the ancient Iranian world utilized the built and natural environment-everything from royal cities and paradise gardens, to hunting enclosures and fire temples-to form and contest Iranian cultural memory, royal identity, and sacred cosmologies over a thousand years of history. Although scholars have often noted startling continuities between the traditions of the Achaemenids and the art and architecture of medieval or Early Modern Islam, the tumultuous mi...

The Monumental Reliefs of the Elamite Highlands documents and analyzes for the first time a corpus of eighteen monumental highland reliefs from the Elamite civilization in ancient Iran, which-hitherto preserved by their remote location and anonymous existence-have recently become imperiled by an influx of tourists and the development of the surrounding landscapes. With this book, Javier Alvarez-Mon aims to safeguard this important part of Iran's cultural heritage. The eighteen reliefs presented...

Parivash Jamzadeh demonstrates how the propaganda material used during Alexander the Great's military campaign to conquer the Achaemenid empire shows multiple layers of Iranian influences. She also shows that the studied sources do not always offer an accurate account of the contemporary Iranian customs and occasionally included historical inaccuracies.