Without a doubt, Abbas Amanat's Iran represents a tremendous undertaking. The writing of such a book can only be achieved by a mature scholar with a truly impressive ability to see the forest for the trees, and vice versa. Amanat is clearly such a scholar. The appearance of Iran is also illustrative of the considerable advances in Iranian history that have occurred over the past thirty years. Amanat draws on scholarship in areas such as women's and gender studies, environmental and fiscal history, and minority studies that were little more than a twinkle in the eye of historians a generation ago. This tome, while undoubtedly Amanat's own seminal accomplishment, also marks the achievements of the expansive field of Iranian history.

Iran is ambitious, in both scope and depth. Amanat achieves a difficult balance between suggesting themes and patterns of the long arc of Iranian history, while also attending, often in great detail, to scholarship from disparate fields. The book would be valuable had it achieved either of these goals, and Amanat does both. The title is suggestive of this methodological approach: Iran: A Modern History is not equivalent to “A History of Modern Iran,” even though of course the thorny questions of modernity, and modernization, are taken up. Rather, the title suggests that Amanat's approach to history is “modern,” in that he pays keen attention to new fields of history, asks “modern” questions, and nods to new approaches.

No matter where one begins such a comprehensive history, one could always begin earlier. Amanat argues convincingly, however, that it was in the Safavid period that the various forces, arrangements, and patterns that shaped subsequent Iranian history were established. This is not to say that the Safavids didn't inherit many aspects of earlier political, social, intellectual, and religious life, which of course they did, but that the Safavid period is a reasonable place to begin a book that proceeds through the Qajar and Pahlavi periods all the way through the Green Movement of 2009.

Although rich in depth, Iran could not possibly include all extant scholarship. Scholars might quibble over the particulars of what Amanat included and what he left out. But the vast majority of us will agree, I think, that, whatever our individual predilections, Amanat's curation is sound. One of the strengths of Amanat's book is that it is not simply a compendium of the “state of the field,” nor is it intended to be. Amanat's own voice and opinion resonate throughout. He suggests avenues of inquiry, proposes possible readings, and attempts to tie loose ends together, always indicating with a careful “perhaps” where he strays from scholarship into supposition. Iran is more than the sum of its parts, not just the warp and weft of depth and breadth, but significant insights into the large questions that are so hard to answer, or ask, such as “Was the Islamic Revolution inevitable?” “What are the major turning points in Iranian history?” and “Are there any enduring continuities?” While I understand that the inclusion of footnotes might be cumbersome in a book of 1,000 pages, they would have been very helpful. This lacuna is somewhat compensated for in the annotated bibliography, which, however welcome, does not satisfy the readers’ desire to identify specific sources.

Every scholar, regardless of specialty, will find something new here—some new scholarship they have not gotten around to reading, some new question they have not considered. Beyond the pleasure of catching up with the field, as it were, what I most appreciated was Amanat's own reading of the long durée of Iranian history and his attempt to address questions of continuity and change. Amanat establishes the dynamic relationship between Iranian state and society as one animated by balance. In addition to identifying the most salient sociopolitical actors, including the shah, court, landowners, peasants, tribe, ʿulamaʾ, and the bazaar, Amanat extends his concept of balance to the push and pull of center and periphery, settled and nomadic. He also considers the effect of famine, war and foreign powers as affecting the dynamics of balance.

Amanat's concept of balance is nuanced. He does not suggest that these many actors and variables always operated in balance—certainly periods of imbalance also characterize Iranian history—but that negotiated balance is a fruitful lens through which to understand periods of stability/instability, intrasocietal relationships, patterns of dynastic power, and discourses of dynastic legitimacy. This is no seesaw between binaries, but a complex negotiation among various actors that followed certain patterns. If we accept the proposition that negotiated balance sets the bounds of possibility, which I am prepared to do, then the Pahlavi period becomes the fundamental watershed in Iranian history.

The Pahlavis irretrievably disrupted the model of religion and state as “two brothers” that had, arguably, governed and defined ideas of just rule since ancient times. The virtual monopolization of power in the hands of Reza Shah was the “price that Iran had to pay,” Amanat maintains, for ending the political chaos unleashed by World War I. Iran had certainly seen strongmen who attempted to centralize power, but none before had enjoyed the technological means by which to obviate the system of negotiated power altogether. Whatever its injustices and violences, the informal system of negotiated balance had served as a check on the monopolization of power by any one group. Its destruction created the structural preconditions for the replacement of a hegemonic “secular” ideology with the revolutionary “Islamic.” That a particular group of Qom-based ʿulamaʾ succeeded in capturing the state is its own story, but one enabled, Amanat suggests, by the monopolization of state power under the Pahlavis.

Iran is a milestone and will continue to be required reading in Iranian history for generations to come. The book is accessible enough for undergraduates, but sufficiently comprehensive to be important for specialists in the field. It is regrettable that so seminal a book contains so many typographical errors as to be distracting. One would hope that a second edition would be free of errors.