Laura Secor

Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the Soul of Iran
Riverhead Books, February 2016
In 1979, seemingly overnight—moving at a clip some thirty years faster than the rest of the world—Iran became the first revolutionary theocracy in modern times. Since then, the country has been largely a black box to the West, a sinister presence looming over the horizon. But inside Iran, a breathtaking drama has unfolded since then, as religious thinkers, political operatives, poets, journalists, and activists have imagined and reimagined what Iran should be. They have drawn as deeply on the traditions of the West as of the East and have acted upon their beliefs with urgency and passion, frequently staking their lives for them.
With more than a decade of experience reporting on, researching, and writing about Iran, Laura Secor narrates this unprecedented history as a story of individuals caught up in the slipstream of their time, seizing and wielding ideas powerful enough to shift its course as they wrestle with their country’s apparatus of violent repression as well as its rich and often tragic history. Essential reading at this moment when the fates of our countries have never been more entwined, Children of Paradise will stand as a classic of political reporting; an indelible portrait of a nation and its people striving for change.
Share This

Barbara Schmitter Heisler, Lily M. Hoffman
Airbnb, Short-Term Rentals and the Future of Housing Routledge, November 2020 How do Airbnb and…

Ha Jin
The Boat Rocker: A Novel Pantheon, October 2016 From the award-winning author of Waiting and…

Kate Brown
Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future W. W. Norton & Company, March…

Barbara Koremenos
The Continent of International Law: Explaining Agreement Design Cambridge University Press, march 2016 Every year,…

Myles W. Jackson
The Genealogy of a Gene. Patents, HIV/AIDS, and Race MIT Press, February 2015 In The…

Mary Cappello
Life Breaks In: A Mood Almanack University of Chicago Press, October 2016 Some books start…

Becoming a Man
Becoming a Man: The Story of a Transition Simon & Schuster, January 2020 Becoming a…

Jonathan Lethem
A Gambler's Anatomy: A Novel Doubleday, October 2016 Handsome, impeccably tuxedoed Bruno Alexander travels the…

Tara Zahra
The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World…

Hari Kunzru
White Tears Knopf, March 2017 White Tears is a ghost story, a terrifying murder mystery,…

J. M. Bernstein
Torture and Dignity: An Essay on Moral Injury University of Chicago Press, September 2015 In…

Mary Jo Bang
A Doll for Throwing: Poems Graywolf Press, August 2017 A Doll for Throwing takes its…

Ron Grigor Suny
They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else. A History of the Armenian Genocide…

Norman M. Naimark
Genocide: A World History Oxford University Press, January 2017 Genocide occurs in every time period…

Barbara Nagel
Ambiguous Aggression in German Realism and Beyond: Flirtation, Passive Aggression, Domestic Violence Bloomsbury Academic, October…

Elizabeth Povinelli
Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism Duke University Press, October 2016 In Geontologies Elizabeth A.…

Elizabeth Goodstein
Georg Simmel and the Disciplinary Imaginary Stanford University Press, January 2017 An internationally famous philosopher…

Leland de la Durantaye
Beckett's Art of Mismaking Harvard University Press, January 2016 Readers have long responded to Samuel…

Joshua Yaffa
Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin's Russia Tim Duggan Books, January 2020…

Felicity D. Scott
Outlaw Territories: Environments of Insecurity / Architecture of Counterinsurgency Zone Books, February 2016 In Outlaw…

Richard Deming
Day for Night Shearsman Books, April 2016 Richard Deming's searching new collection of poems, takes…

Brian McAllister Linn
Elivis's Army: Cold War GIs and the Atomic Battlefield Harvard University Press, September 2016 When…

Pieter M. Judson
The Habsburg Empire: A New History Belknap Press, April 2016 In a panoramic and pioneering…

John Wray
The Lost Time Accidents: A Novel Farrar, Straus and Giroux, February 2016 In his ambitious…

Béatrice Longuenesse
I, Me, Mine: Back to Kant, and Back Again Oxford University Press, January 2017 Béatrice…

Saba Mahmood
Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report Princeton University Press, November 2015 The…