Table of Contents:
- Origins : Zoroaster, the Achaemenids, and the Greeks
- The Iranian revival : Parthians and Sassanids
- Islam and invasions : the Arabs, Turks and Mongols : the Iranian reconquest of Islam, the Sufis, and the poets
- Shiʻism and the Safavids
- The fall of the Safavids, Nader Shah, the eighteenth-century interregnum, and the early years of the Qajar dynasty
- The crisis of the Qajar monarchy, the revolution of 1905-1911 and the accession of the Pahlavi dynasty
- The Pahlavis, and the revolution of 1979
- Iran since the revolution : Islamic revival, war and confrontation
- From Khatami to Ahmadinejad, and the Iranian predicament.