The Fall of Heaven

"Riveting . . . Based on various documentary sources as well as impressive access to royalists, revolutionaries, Queen Farah Pahlavi, and various U.S. officials, this thorough work is immensely detailed yet readable and continuously engaging." --Publishers Weekly [Cooper] delves intimately into the life of the leader who believed firmly in the separation of church and state and who seemed stern and humorless to the public yet was a devoted father of five children and had no patience for the imams dragging their feet on reforms. . . A thorough new appraisal of an enigmatic ruler who died believing his people still loved him. --Kirkus (starred review) "Cooper provides an expert and more nuanced view of the Shah, his regime, and its collapse....This is a fine revisionist study of major world events that continue to influence the fate of the Middle East." --Booklist "Here is all the power and glamour--but also the dark side and ultimately the tragedy--of the last Shah of Iran. A moving and thoroughly researched account." --Robert Lacey, author of The Kingdom and Inside the Kingdom "The Fall of Heaven is a vivid and penetrating portrait of the last chapters of imperial Iran and the ruler whose attempt to thrust his country into modernity ended with upheaval and exile. This book provides valuable insight into the background of a revolution that is still shaking international politics today." --Paul R. Pillar, twenty-eight-year veteran of the CIA and senior fellow at Georgetown University and the Brookings Institution

Andrew Scott Cooper is the author of The Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East, and an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University. He is a regular commentator on US-Iran relations and the oil markets, and his research has appeared in many news outlets including The New York Times and The Guardian. He holds a PhD in the history of US-Iran relations and lives in New York City