I wanted to read this book in order to have a little more background before I read All the Shah's Men.  I'm glad I did so; it was a pretty quick read and pretty informative.  A lot of good interpretive history.  Unfortunately, there were also many sections that provided little benefit to a casual reader and were simply lists of names of nobles/government employees that didn't really add.  No one that isn't an academic studying Iran would really care about most of these names, and I have to believe that these names are not part of any primary research and thus already known/documented in academic circles, so it was unclear why these long lists were included in a relatively introductory textbook.  Overall though, very good.  Very interesting to see some of the mixing of socialist/communist ideology and Muslim belief.  Honestly, even after the Islamic revolution, some of the government's policies were shockingly left-leaning compared to what I had in my head.  Also interesting to see how dramatically many social barometers (such as lifespan, literacy rate, infant mortality) improved after the islamic revolution.