Khomeini's Ghost: Iran Since 1979
and over 900,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Product Description
Review
'A fluent, masterly narrative of the Iranian tragedy over the past thirty years ... Con Coughlin has rendered us a great service with his narrative.' --The Literary Review
Product Description
A compelling, authoritative account of Ayatollah Khomeini and his baleful legacy from the bestselling author of Saddam: His Secret Life
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
If only zero stars was available,
By Kabeer "Kabeer" (London, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Khomeini's Ghost: Iran since 1979 (Hardcover)
A truly terrible work. Coughlin distorts basic facts, and writes in a highly incendiary way, as opposed to presenting basic facts and information in a calm, sober and scholarly fashion. As Azadeh Moaveni makes clear in her review for the New York Times: "Given the current attitudes in Washington about Iran, it seems Coughlin's book has arrived one administration too late." Coughlin is wildy out of step with the times and I hope book sales reflect people's weariness of fearmongering demagogues.Coughlin repeats the Bush melodrama of Absolute Good vs. Absolute Evil, with little appreciation for the subtlety and nuance reality actually demands. I suggest you read Moaveni's review in the NYT entitled "Most Fundamentalist" for a more detailed picture and cataloguing of Coughlin's many rudimentary mistakes, omissions and outright lies. I myself am writing a PhD on contemporary Iranian politics at one of the UK'S top universities so I do have an idea of what I'm talking about also. If you're interested in reading an insightful and illuminating primer on Iran read Ervand Abrahamian's A History of Modern Iran, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton Studies on the Near East) or Michael Axworthy's Iran: Empire of the Mind: A History from Zoroaster to the Present Day. Couglin makes spurious and sensationalist claims on the most tendentious and thin of evidence. Please examine the footnotes. Not a single Persian language source and in a self-referential and somewhat Orwellian fashion he refers to his own newspaper articles in order to vindicate his flagrantly baseless assertions. Couglin is an incredibly suspect figure. In a report published by the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran the sources of 44 articles written by Coughlin about Iran between 29/10/2005 and 10/10/2006 were examined and the following conclusions were made: * Sources were unnamed or untraceable, often senior Western intelligence officials or senior Foreign Office officials. * Articles were published at sensitive and delicate times where there had been relatively positive diplomatic moves towards Iran. * Articles contained exclusive revelations about Iran combined with eye-catchingly controversial headlines. * The story upon which the headline was based does not usually exceed one line or at the most one paragraph. The rest of the article focused on other, often unrelated, information. It also should not be forgotten that Coughlin propagated the claim that the Iraqi army could access weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes. This was the same claim, later discredited, used in the so-called "dodgy dossier" produced by the British intelligence services. Be wary of anything this man writes!
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
As biased as it can get!,
This review is from: Khomeini's Ghost: Iran since 1979 (Paperback)
This is probably among the most biased books about Iran's modern history (It actually starts from over 100 years back). The book keeps making massive claims that when one checks the references it keeps saying "unnamed/private source/interview"! A complete unreliable and biased book. I would have given it no stars if I had the option here...
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
For a reliable factually accurate account - go elsewhere,
This review is from: Khomeini's Ghost: Iran since 1979 (Hardcover)
In criticising this book, I concentrate on one simple, but highly revealing, glaring factual mistake. Coughlin assets (p309 hardback edition) that Iranian lawyer and human rights activist, Shirin Ebadi, received the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature for her book `Iran Awakening'. Coughlin's text implies a degree of familiarity with Ebadi's book and includes it in his Select Bibliography. Ebadi was in fact awarded the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, an event she describes in `Iran Awakening.'The awarding of a Nobel Prize is a publicised, easily checked fact. Yet Coughlin gets it wrong. Such a brazen factual error implies; (i) Coughlin hasn't read his own bibliography, (ii) he doesn't unduly trouble himself with the factual accuracy of his text, (iii) the absence of any basic fact checking during the publisher's editorial process, (iv) the writer has clearly not followed post-revolutionary Iranian affairs as closely as he would have us believe. High-profile international recognition of Ebadi's work was a source of great pride and celebration for many ordinary Iranians. I would expect the publisher's proclaimed expert of world-renown to know such things. There are other fundamental factual errors in this book, some of which are referred to in the earlier reviews. These, together with the error addressed in this review, leave the reader with a simple question; if Coughlin can't, or doesn't choose, to get a simple fact correct, how much trust should we place in the rest of his text?
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Biography > Historical > 1901 Onwards
- Books > Biography > Historical > Countries & Regions > Middle East
- Books > Biography > Political > Countries & Regions > Middle East
- Books > Biography > Political > Political Leaders & Leadership
- Books > Biography > Religious > Islam
- Books > History > Countries & Regions > Asia > Middle East > Iran
- Books > History > Religious History > Islam
- Books > Religion & Spirituality
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
