Behrooz Parhami

Ebrahimzadeh, Cyrus, Mosaddiq from His Own Words: Behind the Curtain of Negotiations.

This Persian-language book, published in Los Angeles in 2004, paints Mohammad Mosaddegh (I prefer this more common spelling), the Iranian prime minister ousted by a CIA-sponsored coup in 1953, as a cowardly, indecisive, self-serving, and flip-flopping leader who made a lot of promises but did not deliver any results. I scanned the book and returned it to the lending library, because I did not consider it worth reading in detail. The writing style is terrible and the book lacks structure. Bold typeface is used indiscriminately for both quotations and emphasis, sometimes in passages spanning more than half a page. A lot of sources are cited (incompletely) and extensively quoted from, but the book lacks a bibliography or explanatory notes. Page after page of narrative and quotes are presented, without giving the reader any sense of direction or critical analysis. While Mossadegh is certainly not above reproach, better-written and more analytical works in the domain of criticizing his personality and policies exist.