I am currently reading the new book, *The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran* by Andrew Scott Cooper (whose previous book *The Oil Kings* about the trilateral relations of the USA, Iran and Saudi Arabia in the 1970s is excellent). So far I am finding it very interesting. It is a revisionist view, sympathetic to the Shah and especially to Queen Farah (who was one of his sources), but also frank about the corruption of the regime and the Shah's personal failings.

I was actually skeptical approaching the book because of the author's open perspective that the Shah's regime was not as dreadful as we in the West, both in the 1970s and since, have traditionally been let to believe, but he draws on a vast array of primary sources, including declassified CIA reports as well as media reports from throughout the Shah's reign, and a wide array of interviews, not only with the former Queen but with former President Banisadr, Zbigniew Brezhinski and members of both the royal and early revolutionary regime. Lots of his interviewees clearly have axes to grind, but it really does offer some fascinating insights.