| Summary: | This is the first book dedicated to the city of Tehran. Once held to be one of the capitals of the luxurious Orient - the home of the Peacock Throne - the city is now a giant metropolis with great influence across the Muslim world. Tehran's two revolutions have not only shaken the city but have drawn the fault lines between East and West. Tehran traces the capital's social and physical transformation over the last two centuries - from the Persian empire to the Islamic Republic, from a small town at the centre of a loose collection of provinces to a node in the global economy, from a city dominated by the shah's citadel overlooking a maze of winding streets to an open but polarized matrix of people and places, changes which characterize the tensions of globalization and modernity. To the West, Tehran remains a hidden city, structured by an alien political and religious ideology. The author's first-hand experience of both Iranian culture and of the city of Tehran itself allows him to explore the subtleties of this urban environment with a fine-grained insight. Tehran will become an indispensable guide to any interested in the fabric and history of this city, one of the few world cities which has shaped the course of the Twentieth Century.
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