King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation

By Scott Anderson

Categories: History, Politics & Social Sciences

King of Kings (2025) is journalist Scott Anderson's narrative history of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the fall of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. Anderson follows the shah, the revolutionaries around Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the American officials who misread events in Tehran. He argues that hubris, delusion and miscalculation on all sides turned a crisis into a revolution, and traces how its aftermath, including the hostage crisis, shaped relations between Iran and the United States.

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• Fareed Zakaria: “The author and veteran war correspondent Scott Anderson has a fascinating new book revisiting the revolution and America's errors before and after.”