Shah of Shas

 

Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuscinski

This is a somewhat brief account of the infamous Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.  My guess is that most Americans never even heard of the man until the hostage crisis that occurred when he fled his country from the radical Islamic uprising in 1978.  The U.S. harbored the man, Iran wanted him back. A dark period of American history then commenced.

Why was Iran so infuriated?  Why was the Shah despised so much and by so many? This book does a good job explaining why.  This is not an extensive biography of the man, nor does the book go very deep in the weeds.  The author is a Polish journalist that spent considerable amount of time in Iran during the height of the crisis, and he does a wonderful job transcribing the feel of the country.  We get a strong sense of the mood, the atmosphere, the sights, and even the smells of this backward country, and it’s never pleasant.

We read how the Shah came into power, and how he essentially was oblivious to the dissatisfaction of the masses.  He had great ideas on how to Westernize his oil-rich country, but was clueless as to how to put these ideas into tangible plans in order to obtain any sort of success.  So when he arbitrarily throws money in every direction, what results is a cluttered, chaotic mess that does absolutely nothing to help the country, and it even manages to further inhibit the masses of residents.

In many ways, this book is more of a thesis on how revolutions occur in countries such as this.  Had this book been about any other country where such an incident occurred, you get the feeling that much of the descriptions would be exactly the same.  When countries such as Iran are run by cruel authoritarian dictators that tolerate no dissent, people are afraid to voice their opinion even at a quiet bus stop.  There are spies all over who would happily nab such individual and put them through immense torture.  So people stay quiet in public amongst the suffering.

So with all of the unrest, suddenly the pieces seem to almost accidentally fit together, and the masses unite almost overnight.  Of course, the Shah is so sheltered, he can’t believe what he sees.  Don’t his countrymen love him unconditionally?  We see the dangers of when a high profiled leader mistakes terror for devotion from his subjects.

There really isn’t much here about the actual hostage crisis.  It may have been mentioned in retrospect once or twice, but that’s about it as it’s never the intention of the author to discuss in detail.  So we don’t read about any of the particulars.

Again, this is a short book, but it’s very well written and very captivating.  This is the sort of book that makes the reader want to learn more, and read more about the man, the place, and the events.  It was a nice quick read, and it’s always an advantage when a book is written by an individual who writes current events for “a living” as they are practiced in keeping the reader’s attention.

Wolf Hall: A Novel

 

Wolf Hall: A Novel by Hilary Mantel

This is one of those books that I simply did not understand.  Not only did I not understand most of the plot itself, but I never understood the purpose. Ultimately, I simply can’t understand how this novel received so many positive reviews. I was simply baffled.  This is one of those books that challenges me to simply quit a book when I discover, after reading the first 100 pages or so, that I simply don’t like it.  For whatever reason, my instinct commands me to push through, and I did so on this on. I read all 600 lousy pages.  To be completely honest, I ended up skimming a great deal of this book.  Even so, it was a big waste.

Supposedly, this book is pushed as a “novel” of the Tudor dynasty. If you’re not familiar with what that is, it’s mainly the period of 16^th century England when King Henry VIII had all of those wives.  Such an account could easily be transcribed into a wonderful novel, as the details of Henry VIII were quite interesting (albeit depressing).  How many real-life events have there been about a King who wants to divorce his wife, and when the Pope refuses to annul the union, he leaves the church and starts his own religion?  And then, essentially commands all of his subjects to join?

Well, the biggest problem here is that the story we read keeps the “main characters” deep in the background.  We rarely read any of the interesting stuff that did, or could have, occurred during this tumultuous time with the important historical figures.  Instead, the author focuses the story on more of the common people that lived during the time.  So read an awful lot of common people, their common occupations, and their common interactions with other common people. It makes for an incredibly dull read.

True, some of these common people were major players in the Tudor reign (Thomas Cromwell, and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey get a decent amount of page space), but their day-to-day interactions with their associates and family simply don’t add any mystique to this poignant part of history.  So again, I ask myself “why”?

If someone wishes to learn more about this period in history, I would advise you against reading this thing. You’ll learn very little.  Plus, I would think you need to have a fairly good grasp of the history before you tackle this thing. Anyway, there are masses of true historic accounts and biographies out there that do the subject matter more justice and makes for much more enjoyable reading.

The only positive thing I can say after wasting so much time on this is that it was a “Kindle Unlimited” offering, so I didn’t have to pay for it.  Sadly, I DID pay for it with a lot of hours of my life.