A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR NONFICTION • KIRKUS PRIZE WINNER • From the author of the landmark bestseller Lawrence in Arabia comes a stunningly revelatory narrative history of the Iranian Revolution, one of the most momentous events in modern times. This groundbreaking work exposes the jaw-dropping stupidity of the American government and traces the rise of religious nationalism, offering essential insights into today's global unrest. “A masterful and propulsive account that chronicles a devastatingly transformative series of events whose aftereffects reverberate to this day.” —The Kirkus Prize 2025 Jury “An exceptional and important book. Scrupulous and enterprising reporting rarely combine with such superb storytelling.” — The New York Times Book Review “A masterful and gripping account. Anderson gives us a page-turning history lesson that is more relevant than ever.” —Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author Imperial Life in the Emerald City, a finalist for the National Book Award On New Year’s Eve, 1977, on a state visit to Iran, President Jimmy Carter toasted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, King of Kings, Light of the Aryans, Shadow of God on Earth, praising Iran as “an island of stability “ due to “your leadership and the respect and admiration and love which your people give to you.” Iran had the world’s fifth largest army and was awash in billions of dollars in oil revenues. Construction cranes dotted the skyline of its booming capital, Tehran. The regime’s feared secret police force SAVAK had crushed communist opposition, and the Shah had bought off the conservative Muslim clergy inside the country. He seemed invulnerable, and invaluable to the United States as an ally in the Cold War. Fourteen months later the Shah fled Iran into exile, forced from the throne by a volcanic religious revolution led by a fiery cleric named Ayatollah Khomeini. The ensuing hostage crisis forever damaged America’s standing in the world. How could the United States, which had one of the largest CIA stations in the world and thousands of military personnel in Iran, have been so blind? The spellbinding story Scott Anderson weaves is one of a dictator blind to the disdain of his subjects and a superpower blundering into disaster. Scott Anderson tells this astonishing tale with the narrative brio, mordant wit, and keen analysis that made his bestselling Lawrence of Arabia one of the key texts in understanding the modern Middle East. The Iranian Revolution, Anderson convincingly argues, was as world-shattering an event as the French and Russian revolutions. In the Middle East, in India, in Southeast Asia, in Europe, and now in the United States, the hatred of economically-marginalized, religiously-fervent masses for a wealthy secular elite has led to violence and upheaval – and Iran was the template. King of Kings is a bravura work of history, and a warning. Named a Best Book of the Year by The Wall Street Journal , The Atlantic , and Vanity Fair “[A] masterly new account of the Iranian revolution, illustrates the stubborn American blindness that hastened the shah’s demise and helped the mullahs prevail. It was an ‘obliviousness’ that ‘became willful, an ignorance to be maintained and defended,’ Anderson writes. . . . This is an exceptional and important book. Scrupulous and enterprising reporting rarely combine with such superb storytelling.” — The New York Times “Mr. Anderson is a first-rate writer of histories. . . . King of Kings is a sweeping, gripping book, one that makes past times and dead people (often weird, complex and evil) spring to life with its narrative verve and attention to detail. . . . Riveting. . . . Exquisite.” — The Wall Street Journal “A masterful and propulsive account that chronicles a devastatingly transformative series of events whose aftereffects reverberate to this day.” —The Kirkus Prize 2025 Jury “Anderson succeeds precisely because he eschews structural, quasi-philosophical queries for an energetic account that concerns itself with, as he puts it, ‘a few core questions’. . . . As a result of this inquiry, Anderson finds an answer at once simpler, more instructive, and truer than those of many scholars. . . . Anderson has also consulted the best scholarship on the revolution. . . . Anderson thus offers a readable page-turner that’s also attuned to those core questions. . . . Anderson’s book [is] one of the best on 1979.” — The Atlantic “Veteran journalist Anderson takes readers through the final years of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s regime in Iran, tracing the political machinations that kept him in power and the corruption that helped turn the Iranian public against him. It is attentive to both the shah’s own oblivious rule and the world-historical mistakes that his American allies made in their attempt to prop him up.” — The Washington Post “Timely. . . . King of Kings is a