King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation

by Scott Anderson

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Scott Anderson masterfully examines the pitfalls of U.S. foreign policy and the enduring global consequences triggered by the Iranian revolution.

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Lawrence in Arabia comes a stunningly revelatory narrative history of the Iranian Revolution, one of the most momentous events in modern times. This groundbreaking work exposes the jaw-dropping stupidity of the American government and traces the rise of religious nationalism, offering essential insights into today's global unrest.

“A must-read that is both urgent and unforgettable.” —Steve Coll, author of The Achilles Trap, Directorate S, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Ghost Wars, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

"A masterful and gripping account. Anderson gives us a page-turning history lesson that is more relevant than ever."—Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author Imperial Life in the Emerald City, a finalist for the National Book Award

On New Year’s Eve, 1977, on a state visit to Iran, President Jimmy Carter toasted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, King of Kings, Light of the Aryans, Shadow of God on Earth, praising Iran as “an island of stability “ due to “your leadership and the respect and admiration and love which your people give to you.” Iran had the world’s fifth largest army and was awash in billions of dollars in oil revenues. Construction cranes dotted the skyline of its booming capital, Tehran. The regime’s feared secret police force SAVAK had crushed communist opposition, and the Shah had bought off the conservative Muslim clergy inside the country. He seemed invulnerable, and invaluable to the United States as an ally in the Cold War. Fourteen months later the Shah fled Iran into exile, forced from the throne by a volcanic religious revolution led by a fiery cleric named Ayatollah Khomeini. The ensuing hostage crisis forever damaged America’s standing in the world. How could the United States, which had one of the largest CIA stations in the world and thousands of military personnel in Iran, have been so blind?

The spellbinding story Scott Anderson weaves is one of a dictator blind to the disdain of his subjects and a superpower blundering into disaster. Scott Anderson tells this astonishing tale with the narrative brio, mordant wit, and keen analysis that made his bestselling Lawrence of Arabia one of the key texts in understanding the modern Middle East. The Iranian Revolution, Anderson convincingly argues, was as world-shattering an event as the French and Russian revolutions. In the Middle East, in India, in Southeast Asia, in Europe, and now in the United States, the hatred of economically-marginalized, religiously-fervent masses for a wealthy secular elite has led to violence and upheaval – and Iran was the template. King of Kings is a bravura work of history, and a warning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385548076
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/05/2025
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	6.44(w) x 9.56(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

SCOTT ANDERSON is the author of two novels and five works of nonfiction, including Lawrence of Arabia, an international bestseller which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book. He is a contributing writer for The Times Magazine. The New York Times Magazine devoted an entire issue to his reportage across the Middle East in August 2016, which was published in book form as FRACTURED LANDS: How the Arab World Came Apart.

Editorial Reviews

Scott Anderson’s King of Kings is a riveting, masterfully told account of how the Shah’s downfall became a tragic turning point in history, as America stumbled blindly into a long and costly conflict that shadows the Middle East to this day. Anderson's clear analysis and vivid storytelling unravel one of the great miscalculations in America's postwar foreign policy—a must-read that is both urgent and unforgettable.” —Steve Coll, author of Directorate S, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Ghost Wars, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

“In his masterful and gripping account of the Iranian revolution, Scott Anderson gives us a page-turning history lesson that is more relevant than ever: A story of American diplomatic blunders and miscalculations that led to the loss of a vital ally and the commencement of hostilities that have roiled the world for nearly four decades. Taking us inside the fortified walls of the shah’s palaces, King of Kings lays bare the folly and hubris that led to the shah’s demise, the hostage crisis and a radical theocracy that would reshape the Middle East.”
—Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author of National Book Award finalist Imperial Life in the Emerald City

“Instantly absorbing, King of Kings is an exhilarating plunge into the psychology of unchecked power, which secludes, blinds, and ultimately betrays its holders. Anderson is a master of the telling detail; he gives us lessons not only from the Shah’s undoing but also from Washington’s weakness for rigid assumptions—until history, as it so often does, shatters the illusion of control.”
—Evan Osnos, author of the National Book Award winner Age of Ambition

“Anderson’s brilliant new account of the events leading to the shah’s fall is both masterful and mesmerizing. With bracing clarity, drawing from interviews with direct participants, King of Kings shows senior Iranian and U.S. officials sleepwalking into a disaster with global consequences—and one that was far from inevitable. A must-read for anyone looking to understand the origins of the Middle East’s most dangerous regime.”
—Joby Warrick, author of Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction

“The Iranian Revolution was one of the most momentous events of the Twentieth Century, one whose reverberations continue to shape the Middle East. In this highly readable and probing book, Scott Anderson revisits the events of that critical year, and draws on previously unknown information to chart the course of events that made what seemed improbable to become inevitable: the fall of the monarchy before a triumphant revolution.”
—Vali Nasr, Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at the School of Advanced Studies of Johns Hopkins University and the author of Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History

“Scott Anderson’s thrilling, fully authoritative work takes us behind the scenes of US decision-making blunders as the country’s leaders fumbled the Iranian revolution, losing the US’s most critical ally in the Middle East. Nearly a half century later, this is the gold standard account of the Shah’s fall, with fresh dramatic tales and arresting details from the last living players. An epic and heart-breaking tragedy.”
—Azadeh Moaveni, author of Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran

“Anderson uses his incomparable prose to crack open the deep story behind one of the most momentous events of the last decades. An important and riveting book.”
—Sebastian Junger, New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Storm and War

“Written with a journalist’s instincts and the plotlines of a thriller, King of Kings is the most compelling account yet of the revolution in Iran—an event so significant that it continues to shape world affairs today. An outstanding book.”
—Eugene Rogan, author of The Fall of the Ottomans

“King of Kings chronicles the fall of Iran's Shah—a man feared by many but understood by few. This account examines how hubris, Cold War tensions, and revolutionary fervor toppled a monarchy whose ruler pursued modernization while remaining fatally disconnected from his people, the shockwaves of which still reverberate through international relations today.”
—Bradley Hope, bestselling co-author of Billion Dollar Whale and Blood and Oil

“King of Kings delivers remarkable new insights into one of history’s least understood upheavals—the Iranian revolution. Rich in detail and gripping portraits of the individuals at the heart of the tragedy, this book gets to the essence of how this unique revolution succeeded—and why it cannot be replicated.”
—Kim Ghattas, author of Black Wave

“Scott Anderson vividly describes, in unerringly forensic detail, how American foreign policy makers completely misread—as indeed they continue to misread—the Middle East and all its complexities, with consequences that reverberate to this day.”
—Diana Darke, author of Stealing from the Saracens

“Wry, acute, forensically reported, deeply researched, King of Kings is a brilliantly absorbing, page-turning account of the Iranian Revolution. Scott Anderson is one of the very best narrative historians writing today. From the seething streets, to the filigree of Palace intrigue and the politics of American interests, he captures the opportunism, self-delusion and ineptitude that ploughed a furrow across the face of the modern Middle East. It’s a perfect lesson for our times: history has no idea what it’s doing.”
—Wendell Steavenson, author of The Weight of a Mustard Seed

“Chaos is strewn by foolhardy leaders acting on bad information in this riveting history of the Iranian revolution. . . . Anderson’s story builds a rushing momentum as one miscalculation after another hurtles the country toward the 1979 ‘revolution few saw coming and no one knew how to stop.’ The result is an illuminating, operatic depiction of the revolution as a farcical cavalcade of arrogant mistakes with dire consequences.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred)

“As Anderson lays out with meticulous reporting and consummate storytelling, many of Iran’s spectacular gains—and along with them, its once-inviolable alliance with the U.S.—came undone with the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the ascent of Ayatollah Khomeini. . . . Though the Iranian Revolution unfolded more than 45 years ago, the now-fraught U.S.-Iran relationship remains front and center, and there are still hard-won lessons to glean about the costs of inattention.”
—Booklist (starred)

“A thoroughgoing history of the last years of the Pahlavi dynasty and the rise of the Islamist theocracy in Iraq. . . . An eye-opening history of how Iran became a point on the ‘axis of evil’ and is considered such a dangerous enemy today.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

From the Publisher

★ 2025-04-17
A thoroughgoing history of the last years of the Pahlavi dynasty and the rise of the Islamist theocracy in Iraq.

Shah Reza Pahlavi, notes journalist and historian Anderson, met with seven American presidents over his long reign. When the last, Jimmy Carter, took office, the Shah had reason to worry, since Carter had run on a clean-government, pro–human rights platform. “Both these promises,” Anderson writes, “cast an uncomfortable spotlight on Iran.” At the time, Islamist protest was rising in the Shah’s realm, and with it demonstrations by outlawed leftist groups; when the Shah arrived in Washington, D.C., more than 4,000 Iranians, mostly in the latter camp, greeted him in protest. The Shah proved ineffectual in suppressing the growing rebellion and tried to mollify some critics, even though he was warned to do something: As Anderson documents, “the more dovish State Department felt it was vital that his program of political reforms continue while he sought to restore order”—but Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, “felt that order should be reestablished first” and urged a crackdown. Although there were some high-profile victims of political intrigue, including a middle-aged son of the then-exiled cleric Ayatollah Khomeini, the Shah’s regime was comparatively light-handed: Whereas the government of the Islamic Republic that overthrew the Shah recorded that the regime had killed 60,000 Iranians, an investigative committee “arrived at the remarkably precise figure of 2,781.” Not bad, measured against the Islamists, who killed 5,000 leftists in a single week during a purge of 1988, as well as thousands more Iranians executed in the first years of Khomeini’s government. It’s ironic that the U.S., in Cold War mode, bet on the wrong horse, subverting the leftists while “a Red Iran probably would have been far preferable to the Iran they got.”

An eye-opening history of how Iran became a point on the “axis of evil” and is considered such a dangerous enemy today.

Kirkus Reviews