Author Cyrus Kadivar gives us a fascinating account of the last days of Pahlavi rule in Iran in his new book, “Farewell Shiraz: An Iranian Memoir of Revolution and Exile.” He left Iran at the age of 16, during the 1979 revolution, for a life of exile. He has felt caught “between a deep nostalgia for yesterday’s Iran and today’s unfulfilled dreams” ever since. For years, he was obsessed with the desire to understand what caused the 1979 revolution and how the founding of the Islamic Republic put an end to centuries of monarchic rule.
His interest in Iran’s history led him to write articles for both Iranian and Western publications. When he turned 37, the editor of “The Iranian,” a popular online magazine for Persians emigres, suggested that he should travel to Egypt to share his thoughts about Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s final resting place.
“I jumped at the idea,” Kadivar wrote. In October 1999, he flew to the country that had taken in the Pahlavi family 20 years previously. The shah had been welcomed by President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and, according to the author, “Richard Nixon was reportedly impressed by Sadat’s noble gesture for his friend and he believed that the way the US government treated the shah was unforgivable.”
Kadivar added: “The shah’s exile and his death in Egypt had transfigured him in a way that prevented a critical but balanced assessment of his life and achievements.” During a visit to Cairo’s Rifa’i Mosque, where the shah lies in a temporary burial chamber, Kadivar kept asking himself: “How did we lose our country?”
Upon leaving the mosque, a poor man came up to Kadivar. He refused the alms given to him and, looking straight into his eyes, told him: ”Nobody should be buried away from the country of his birth. Insh’Allah, your shah will one day be reburied in Iran. On that day, you will find your country again.”
“Inside me, something had been unlocked. I realized that despite the years of soul-searching, I had not been able to properly mourn all that had been lost. Nostalgia for a forgotten world and my beloved city of Shiraz flooded my senses,” the author wrote.
The search for a vanished world begins in Shiraz, the city of fragrant roses, splendid sun and refreshing breezes streaming from the purple-tinted Zagros Mountains. It is a city where the author spent a happy childhood surrounded by his parents and loving grandparents. His grandfather knew Shiraz when there was little to do but under the new rule of Reza Shah, life was better.
When Reza Shah Pahlavi’s predecessor, Ahmad Shah, was deposed by parliamentary vote in October 1925, the elite, the clergy and the majority of Iranians voted in favor of the monarchy because they believed a republic might create instability and disunity. On April 1926, Reza Shah Pahlavi was crowned “Shahanshah” — the king of kings in English — in the Golestan Palace in the presence of his six-year-old son and future heir, Mohammed Reza.
Reza Shah, an admirer of Turkey’s Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, declared that all men not serving in the military, especially civil servants, must discard their old clothes and adopt Western dress. A new law also ordered every citizen to adopt a new surname devoid of lengthy titles. The author’s grandfather eventually chose the name “Kadivar,” meaning a country squire in English.
During World War II, Reza Shah’s support for the Axis powers caused his downfall. He was forced to abdicate and his son, Mohammed Reza, was sworn in as the new shah by Iran’s parliament. He eventually appointed Mohammed Mosaddegh as prime minister — a formidable character and brilliant orator who nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and was overthrown in a coup d’état aided by the CIA in 1953. From that day onwards, “Mohammed Reza Shah was determined to rule as an absolute monarch,” Kadivar wrote.
However, trouble was on the horizon as in the late 1970s, a friend of the Kadivar family shocked them when he said “there are going to be major changes in Iran if your king continues the way he’s going. Things will not stay like this forever. All appears calm on the surface now, but it could suddenly change overnight.”
A year later, the situation got worse. There were frequent demonstrations. The shah’s personality seemed eclipsed by Ayatollah Khomeini’s personality and, eventually, the shah left for Egyot in January 1979.
The book features an interview with Hossein Amirsadeghi, whose father was the shah’s chauffeur and the first to announce the news of the shah’s departure. “If the king and his supporters had shown more resolve, we would not have lost our country,” he told Kadivar. This belief was also shared by the author’s father who could not understand why the shah failed to take the decision to restore his authority.
After revolutionaries stormed the author’s father’s office following the revolution, he returned home and told his family that “Iran is no longer a country for a young man. We have to get out. It’s for the best.”
Looking back on those events, many believe that a combination of bad decisions made by the imperial regime caused the demise of the monarchy. Kadivar also reminds us that in May 1980, two months after his arrival in Egypt, the shah gave an interview to the Washington Post in which he acknowledged that trusting the Americans and the English had cost him his throne.
This riveting memoir is marked by its sincerity and elegance. It expresses the author’s feelings and efforts to overcome the pain of leaving his beloved country. His last words call for “a truly free nation where nobody lives in fear, where truth, not falsehood, is a virtue.”
Book Review: Dreams of a forgotten childhood in Shiraz
Book Review: Dreams of a forgotten childhood in Shiraz

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Physics of the Tropical Atmosphere and Tropical Cyclones’

Author: Kerry Emanuel
“Physics of the Tropical Atmosphere and Tropical Cyclones” provides readers with a firm grounding in the observations, theory, and modeling of tropical weather systems and tropical cyclones.
How and why do tropical cyclones form? What physics underpins their genesis, intensification, structure, and power?
This authoritative and accessible book tackles these and other questions, providing a unifying framework for understanding most tropical weather systems.
What We Are Reading Today: The Seed Detective by Adam Alexander

In “The Seed Detective,” Adam Alexander shares his own stories of seed hunting, with the origin stories behind many of our everyday vegetable heroes.
Taking us on a journey that began when we left the life of the hunter-gatherer to become farmers, he tells tales of globalization, political intrigue, colonization and serendipity – describing how these vegetables and their travels have become embedded in our food cultures.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘What Matters in Jane Austen?’

- In this work he poses 20 questions such as: “Why is the weather important?” “How much money is enough?” “Why is Darcy so rude?” and “What do the characters call each other?”
Author: John Mullan
To mark 250 years since the birth of one of the most famous women authors in English literature, John Mullan’s “What Matters in Jane Austen? Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved” has been reissued.
First published in 2012, the book is a kind of literary scavenger hunt, with Mullan as guide — witty, knowing and visibly delighted by the patterns and puzzles he uncovers.
We go on the journey with him, uncovering the meanings embedded in the seemingly minor, but not minute, details of Austen’s fiction.
The Lord Northcliffe professor of modern English literature at University College London, Mullan is a leading authority on Austen. He has edited “Sense and Sensibility” and “Emma” for Oxford World’s Classics and has published widely on 18th- and 19th-century literature.
In this work he poses 20 questions such as: “Why is the weather important?” “How much money is enough?” “Why is Darcy so rude?” and “What do the characters call each other?”
That last question forms one of the book’s most interesting chapters for me. It’s about the seemingly stealthy and subtle ways in which the characters address others by a name and the power of not saying their name at all.
In Austen’s world, names are never casual. A shift from a formal title to a first name can signal a change in status, desire or familiarity. A name can be a quiet form of rebellion or a coded expression of closeness or longing. It matters whether someone is “Miss Bennet” or “Elizabeth,” whether a man dares to use her given name directly and whether that liberty is permitted or returned.
Again and again, Mullan shows us how much Austen could signal with the smallest of choices. What seems like a passing detail is likely loaded with meaning.
This new edition, with a fresh preface, is a fitting tribute to Austen’s longevity. Rather than framing her novels as relics to admire, Mullan treats them as living texts full of sly codes and sharp decisions.
It offers fans of Austen’s work something they crave: evidence. A deep dive into the text itself.
By the end, the title becomes clear, not just because Mullan asked the right questions but because, through his close reading and sharp observations, we begin to get answers.
To Austen, who died in 1817, everything mattered: names, clothes, weather, silence. And more than two centuries later, her world — precise, constrained, emotionally charged — still has plenty to show and tell.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Stoic Mindset’

- Tuitert’s narrative begins with his own crucible: the pressure-cooker world of elite athletics, where injuries and setbacks threatened his career
Author: Mark Tuitert
Olympic champion speed skater Mark Tuitert merges ancient philosophy with modern resilience in “The Stoic Mindset,” published in 2024.
The guide transcends typical self-help tropes, offering strategies to transform adversity into strength through the principles of Stoicism.
This ancient philosophy provides a tool kit for staying calm, focused, and strong in the face of life’s chaos. Emerging in Ancient Greece and later popularized in Rome, it is less about dusty theories and more about how to live well.
Tuitert’s narrative begins with his own crucible: the pressure-cooker world of elite athletics, where injuries and setbacks threatened his career. His discovery of Stoicism became his mental armor. The book meticulously unpacks core tenets, focusing on actionable responses, reframing obstacles as opportunities, and cultivating “amor fati” (love of fate).
What resonates most is Tuitert’s rejection of passive acceptance. Instead, he advocates active resilience, using journaling, mindfulness, and preemptive adversity training to fortify mental agility.
His chapter on failure dissects how embracing vulnerability fuels growth, illustrated by his comeback from a career-threatening injury to clinch gold at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
Tuitert’s prose is refreshingly pragmatic. He avoids academic jargon, grounding Seneca and Marcus Aurelius’ wisdom in relatable anecdotes — from navigating corporate burnout to parenting challenges. His emphasis on practice over theory stands out as well.
Some may criticize the athletic parallels as niche, but Tuitert universalizes them deftly.
While examining Tuitert’s practical Stoicism, I happened to contrast his Olympic-forged resilience with Nietzsche’s fiery critique of Stoic detachment, revealing how one stabilizes storms while the other ignites revolutions.
I found that Tuitert seeks mastery through emotional discipline, whereas Nietzsche champions vitality through embracing chaos.
In an era of digital overload and anxiety, “The Stoic Mindset” is a tactical manifesto for clarity.
Tuitert’s genius lies in making a 2,000-year-old philosophy feel urgently contemporary, proving that true victory is not avoiding storms but learning to dance in the rain.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘Following the Bend’

- In this accessible and uniquely personal book, Ellen Wohl explains how to “read” a river, blending the latest science with her own personal experiences as a geologist and naturalist who has worked on rivers for more than three decades
Author: ELLEN WOHL
When we look at a river, either up close or while flying over a river valley, what are we really seeing? “Following the Bend” takes readers on a majestic journey by water to find answers, along the way shedding light on the key concepts of modern river science, from hydrology and water chemistry to stream and wetland ecology.
In this accessible and uniquely personal book, Ellen Wohl explains how to “read” a river, blending the latest science with her own personal experiences as a geologist and naturalist who has worked on rivers for more than three decades.